• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 1616 0

served in the Athenian cavalry during the Peloponnesian War, and fought against the democratic insurgents in the Athenian civil war of 404/3 BC. After the democratic victory, Xenophon left Greece. He went to Anatolia to join the ‘Ten Thousand’, the Greek mercenary force supporting Cyrus the Younger’s attempt to usurp the Persian throne. Cyrus was killed at Cunaxa (near Babylon) in 401 BC, and the five Greek generals in command of the Ten Thousand were themselves murdered soon after; Xenophon’s star rose in their place, as he led the surviving Greeks on a dangerous and violent journey back to safety near Trapezus. It was during this period that Socrates was executed, and scholars are divided on how well the two men could have been acquainted.5 Xenophon continued as a mercenary, first in Thrace and then for the Spartans in Anatolia and mainland Greece. Exiled by Athens, but protected by the Spartans, he was set up on an estate at Skillus, where he wrote most of his works. After the Spartan defeat at Leuctra, Xenophon was expelled from his estate and, though now reconciled with Athens, lived out the rest of his years near Corinth. His son Gryllus was killed fighting in the Athenian cavalry close to Mantinea in 362 BC.

XENOPHON’S WORKS MENTIONING SOCRATES, IN POSSIBLE ORDER OF COMPOSITION

Apology (composed after 384 BC?); Memorabilia (commenced); Symposium (before 371?); Memorabilia (completed); Oeconomicus (completed after 362).

Socrates also features in Xenophon’s Hellenica (not completed before 359–355 BC), a history of Greek affairs from 411 to 362 BC.6

Plato

Plato was in his late twenties when Socrates was executed in 399 BC. He had probably known Socrates for all of his adult life.7 Born some time around 428–423 BC, perhaps in Athens, into an aristocratic Athenian family, Plato was descended from Solon, who tradition claimed had brought democracy to the city.8 Plato’s uncle Critias headed the Thirty Tyrants, the murderous pro-Spartan faction that briefly controlled Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War. Plato himself had been born in 428, not long after this war started. Growing up in the Athenian district of Cotyllus, he probably followed the normal educational path of a young aristocratic boy in poetry, music and gymnastics. He was a champion wrestler, almost certainly later serving in the Athenian military, presumably in the cavalry.9 After Socrates’ death, Plato’s life was nomadic and eventful. He spent time in Megara, Egypt and southern Italy, associating with tyrants in Sicily and even being sold into (and immediately ransomed from) slavery on the island of Aegina in 388/7 BC. Shortly afterwards he seems to have established the Academy in Athens, one of the most significant intellectual institutions in the history of the world. There men such as Aristotle met; they were not taught as such, but engaged in the long conversations that characterise Plato’s written output, and which Plato considered the necessary foundation-stone of all philosophical progress. Plato died in 348/7 BC.

It is important to remember that both Plato and Xenophon composed their works convinced that Athenians were wrong to vote for the death of Socrates.

PLATO’S DIALOGUES

The works are divided into three fluid and still-controversial periods: (a) early, (b) middle, (c) late. Perhaps Lysis was written while Socrates was still alive.

(a) Hippias Minor; Ion; Crito; Euthyphro; Laches; Charmides; Lysis; Menexenus; Protagoras; Meno; Gorgias; Euthydemus

(b) Cratylus; Hippias Maior (both perhaps early); Phaedo; Symposium; Republic (perhaps Book 1 is early); Phaedrus (perhaps late)

(c) Parmenides; Theaetetus; Sophist; Politicus; Philebus; Timaeus; Critias; Laws; (falsely attributed), Plato Alcibiades 1.

THE LIST OF DIALOGUES BELOW IS IN POSSIBLE ORDER OF DRAMATIC DATE

450 – Parmenides; 433/2 – Protagoras; 431–404 – Republic, Gorgias; 429 – Charmides; 424 – Laches; 422 – Cratylus; 418–416 – Phaedrus; 416 – Symposium; 413 – Ion; 409 – Lysis; 407 – Euthydemus; 402 – Meno; winter 402/1 – Menexenus; spring 399 – Theaetetus; 399 – Euthyphro,