The Hemlock Cup - Bettany Hughes [242]
11 Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.2.8, and Plutarch, Lysander, 14–15.
12 Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.2.10–11. Trans. R. Warner (1966).
13 Xenophon, Apology, 8. He continues, ‘And that while other men furnish themselves with expensive delicacies from the market-place I produce, at no cost, more pleasurable ones from my own soul’ Trans. J. A. Martinez (2002).
14 Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.2.20. Trans. R. Warner (1966).
15 Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.2.23.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
Thirty Tyrants
1 Lysias, Against Eratosthenes, esp. 5–21.
2 References to alternative forms of execution can be found, for instance, in Aristophanes, Thesmophoriazusae, 929–1209, and Xenophon, Hellenica, 1.7.20.
3 Aristophanes, Frogs, 120–7.
4 Andocides, 3.10.
5 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.35.
6 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.12. Trans. J. Fogel (2002).
7 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.18–19. Trans. J. Fogel.
8 The Ancient sources were quick to promote the argument that Socrates abused his position as a teacher. This view has down the years been vigorously maintained by modern-day teachers and tutors.
9 This fact is frequently employed to show that Socrates had sympathies with the Thirty. The question is still open as to why Socrates chose not to leave Athens at this time, as other committed democrats did.
10 A later source, Diodorus Siculus, has it that Socrates and two young companions tried to stop the two Scythian guards who had come to exterminate Theramenes – but he begged the philosopher to hold back. Universal Library, 14.5.1–3.
11 Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.3.15. Trans. R. Warner (1966).
12 Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.4.9. Trans. R. Warner (1966).
13 Xenophon, Hellenica, 2.4.3, see also Diodorus Siculus, XIV, 32.
14 Plato, Apology, 32c-d. Trans. Brickhouse and Smith (2002).
CHAPTER FIFTY
The scapegoat
1 Words reproduced in a variety of scholia and sources from the second century BC to late Antiquity.
2 Socrates was that difficult thing in society: a maverick at the centre of things. Think of a hermit; an anchorite; a prophet on the hill. These remote radicals are less troubling than the inscrutable, revolutionary boy next door.
3 We know that Socrates gave a thought to how the clothes got onto his back, thanks to a little anecdote in Xenophon’s Memorabilia, 2.7.1–12. Because of the political turmoil following an oligarchic coup, no fewer than fourteen homeless female relatives had to move in to Aristarchus’ household. Socrates’ advice was brisk – get them to set up a wool-working business so they could derive both job satisfaction and turn a pretty profit. The exchange gives us a little hint of his view on women – that they should be allowed to be a more productive, perhaps even a more valued, part of the body politic. Another troubling half-suggestion that may have earned him distrust.
4 Xenophon, Memorabilia, 1.2.9. Trans. J. Fogel (2002).
5 Plato, Apology, 17d–18a.
6 Unlike those citizens who have lived and died to be jurors – just listen to Aristophanes in his play Wasps: ‘It’s this that grieves us most of all, to see men who have never served or held either lance or oar in defence of their country, enriching themselves at our expense without ever raising a blister on their hands. In short, I give it as my deliberate opinion that in future every citizen not possessed of a sting shall not receive the three obols.’ Aristophanes, Wasps 1117–21. Trans. E. O’Neill (1938).
7 We should, instead, think of him as an unconventional political activist – understanding polis in the Greek sense: as a body of men. See Plato, Gorgias, 521d, and Meno, 100a.
8 Plato, Gorgias, 474a.
9 Indictment quoted in Diogenes Laertius, On the Lives and Opinions of Eminent Philosophers, 2.40. See also trans. M. Munn (2000): ‘Meletus, son of Meletus of Pitthus, has written a sworn indictment against Socrates, son of Sophroniskos of Alopeke, as follows: Socrates has committed the offence of not acknowledging the gods acknowledged by the state and of introducing other new divinities. He