Orunmila Socrates.pdf Uploaded by Marcelo De Souza Souto. As the sons of stone masons. Their faces look alike to a great extent. Because there is also a fi Download With Free Trial picture of Socrates, especially in the work of Aristophanes, corresponding mythical picture of Orunmila in the Ifa corpus, both are comparable. Stone Breaks the Socrates Story. This obsession with the trial of Socrates is not mine alone. Scholars and historians have been puzzled by it for centu-ries, and still are. Stone on Socrates 3 which never fails to touch one deeply, no matter how of.
I.F. Stone Breaks the Socrates Story:
An old muckraker sheds fresh light on the 2,500-year-old mystery and reveals some Athenianpolitical realities that Plato did his best to hide.
An old muckraker sheds fresh light on the 2,500-year-old mystery and reveals some Athenianpolitical realities that Plato did his best to hide.
By I.F. Stone
(Originally published in The New York Times Magazine, April 8, 1979, pp. 22 ff.)
Last year, on his 70th birthday, in an interview with himself for thisMagazine, retired journalist I.S. Stone spoke of his new-found joy in Greek studies andhis hope of finding in them 'one last scoop' that would help clear up some ofthe mystery which still surrounds the trial of Socrates, that cause célèbre which hastantalized scholars and historians for centuries. Now, he believes he has found newevidence that sheds light not only on the trial itself but on the complex politics offifth-century Athens. Here – again in a self-interview – Mr. Stone sets forthhis discovery and, at the same time, takes us on an adventure in learning and an armchairtour of the ancient world.
Isn’t it a little late in the day to be re-examining the trial of Socrates? Ithought that was 25 centuries ago?
It was held, to be exact, in 399 B.C.
And now, in A.D. 1979, you have discovered something newsworthy – excuse theexpression – about a trial that the wire services covered 2378 years ago?
This obsession with the trial of Socrates is not mine alone. Scholars and historianshave been puzzled by it for centuries, and still are.
What’s the puzzle?
The Athens of Socrates’s time has gone down in history as the very place wheredemocracy and freedom of speech were born. Yet that city put Socrates, its most famousphilosopher, to death. Presumably this was because it citizens did not like what he wasteaching. Yet he had been teaching there all his life, unmolested. Why did they wait untilhe was 70, and had only a few years to live, before executing him?
Why should this fascinate an old Washington muckraker like you?
Because it’s a black eye for all I believe in, for democracy and free speech.Anyone who starts out to study the problem of free speech in depth – as I did afterill health forced me to give up my Weekly – is irresistibly drawn back to ancientAthens, where it all began. / 23 /
Isn’t that pretty far from home base, from current concerns and difficulties?
Not really. All our basic problems are there in miniature. I fell in love with theAthenians and the participatory democracy they developed. Free discussion was the ruleeverywhere – in the Assembly, the law courts, the theatre, and the gymnasiums wherethey spent much of their leisure. Free speech – what the Greeks called parrhasia –was as much taken for granted as breathing.
But then I was stopped, or stumped, by this contradictory and traumatic spectacle ofwhat they did to Socrates. These people and this city, to which I look back forinspiration – how could they have condemned this philosopher to death? How could soblatant a violation of free speech occur in a city that prided itself on freedom ofinquiry and expression?
But why should we care at this late date?
Because Plato turned the trial of his master, Socrates, into a trial of Athens and ofdemocracy. He used it to demonstrate that the common people were too ignorant, benightedand fickle to entrust with political power. In Plato’s 'Apology,' thecontrast drawn between the nobility of Socrates and the grim verdict of his juror-judgesindicted democracy in the eyes of posterity. And thanks to his genius, no other trialexcept that of Jesus has so captured the imagination of Western man.
Plato made Socrates the secular martyred saint of the struggle against democracy. Hestigmatized it as 'mobocracy.' Yet this was the very same 'mob' whichapplauded the anti-war plays of Aristophanes when Athens was fighting for its life againstSparta. (No such antiwar plays were allowed, by either side, during our last two WorldWars). This was the same 'mob' whose eagerness for new ideas, and its readinessto hear them, drew philosophers from all over the ancient world. It made Athens – inthe proud words of Pericles – 'the school of Hellas,' the university of theGreek world. It is the high repute of Athens that makes the trial of Socrates so puzzling.
And now you think you can throw a little fresh light upon it?
I’ve been happily bogged down in ancient Athens for several years, trying toexplore all of Greek thought and civilization, in order to reach a better understanding ofthe trial. In my researches amid the ancient documents I recently stumbled on a crucialbit of evidence, hitherto overlooked, which makes the trial and its outcome a little lessinexplicable.
I hope your life-insurance policies are fully paid up. The classical scholars will belying in wait for you, with knives sharpened. No / 26 / trial in history has beenmore intimately studied, pored over and speculated upon. And you, an interloper and –most horrid of academic epithets – a 'journalist,' believe you have foundsomething they all overlooked! Have you seen any unidentified flying objects lately.?
Sneer if you will, but I’ve been encouraged by a remark of Jakob Burckhardt, thegreat Swiss historian of the Renaissance and of Greek culture: To emphasize the importanceof restudying the classics in every generation, Burckhardt once said that, in a hundredyears, someone would reread Thucydides and find something in his history 'we had alloverlooked.'
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How can a newspaperman find something new to report about a trial that took place solong ago?
You re-examine all the source material for yourself. You go back to the texts in theoriginal language, so that you can evaluate every nuance. You search out internalcontradictions and curious evasions. It’s not so different from digging the realtruth out of a Pentagon or State Department document.
Could you fill me in on the sources for the trial – and do it, please, in lessthan three volumes?
I can do it in one sentence: The sources are scanty and one-sided. The onlycontemporary accounts are by two disciples of Socrates, Plato and Xenophon, both anxiousto put their beloved master in as good a light as possible. But they do not give us atranscript of the actual trial. They give us their own conception of what Socrates said,or perhaps their own conception of what he should have said in his own defense.Plato’s exquisite, polished version, like his Socratic dialogues, can more reasonablybe read as fictionalized biography. In Xenophon, we are told that Socrates’s'inner voice' forbade him to prepare a defense. There is even one ancienttradition that tells us he was silent before his judges.
What of the prosecution’s side?
We have no record of it. We know it only by indirection from the two'Apologies,' one by Plato, the other by Xenophon – the word'apology' in Greek means defense -- and from the 'memorabilia,' ormemoirs, of Socrates by Xenophon. It’s like trying to cover a trial when one isbarred from the courtroom except to hear the defendant’s summation to the jury.
Do we know the actual charges against Socrates?
There were two charges: first, that Socrates violated the law by 'refusing to doreverence to the gods recognized by the city, and introducing other new divinities,'and second, by 'corrupting the youth.' But we do not have the text of the lawson which these charges were based, nor the specific allegations.
So we do not know just what Socrates is supposed to have said or done that made himseem disrespectful of the city gods. Nor do we know what was meant by the charge ofcorrupting the youth. Under Athenian legal procedure such specifics were required in apreliminary complaint and hearing before a magistrate, who then decided whether theallegations and the evidence were sufficient to warrant a trial. But we have no account ofthis preliminary procedure, the equivalent of our grand jury.
Didn’t Plato’s dialogue the 'Euthyphro' cover the preliminaryexamination?
That’s a common impression, but it’s wrong. The 'Euthyphro'pictures Socrates arriving for the preliminary hearing. But he gets no farther than theportico of the examining magistrate. There he engages in a long and inconclusiveconversation with Euthyphro, the defendant in another case. The subject they discuss isthe proper definition of piety or holiness. It’s charming, but tells us nothing ofwhat happened when Socrates went in for his own arraignment.
Why do you think Plato chose to be so uninformative?
A lawyer might surmise that he blocked out as much as he could of the specific chargesbecause they were too damaging and too hard to disprove.
Do you see the same defensive strategy in Plato’s 'Apology'?
I do. Socrates evades the charge that he did not respect the city’s gods, andproves instead that he is not an atheist. But he was not charged with atheism. We neverlearn what was meant by corrupting the young. The reader of Plato’s'Apology' comes away with / 34 / the impression that this wonderful oldphilosopher was condemned simply because he had spent his life exhorting his fellowcitizens to be virtuous.
How do you account for his condemnation?
I believe the case against Socrates was political and that the charge of corrupting theyouth was based on a belief – and considerable evidence – that he wasundermining their faith in Athenian democracy.
If so, why wasn’t the charge brought earlier? He had been teaching for a longtime. A quarter century before the trial, Socrates had already been attacked inAristophanes’s play 'The Clouds' for running a 'think thank'whose smart-alecky graduates beat their fathers. If they thought him the source of suchsubversive teaching, why did the Athenians wait until 399 B.C., when he was already an oldman, before putting him on trial?
Because in 411 B.C. and again in 404 B.C. antidemocrats had staged bloody revolutionsand established short-lived dictatorships. The Athenians were afraid this might happenedagain.
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I haven’t found that in Plato.
Plato didn’t intend that you should. Those are the realities his'Apology' was calculated to hide. Plato was a genius, a dazzlingprestidigitator, with all the gifts of a poet, a dramatist and a philosopher. His'Apology' is a masterpiece of world literature, a model of courtroom pleading;and the greatest single piece of Greek prose that has come down to us. It rises to aclimax which never fails to touch one deeply, no matter how often it is reread. I read the'Apology' in the original for the first time last year, slowly and painfully,line by line. When I came to the noble farewell of Socrates to his judges, it gave mechest pains, it was so moving; I gladly offer up my angina in tribute to its mastery.'I go to die,' Socrates says, 'and you to live, but which of us goes to thebetter lot is known to none but God.’ Even Shakespeare never surpassed that! Butthese very qualities also make Plato’s 'Apology' a masterpiece of evasion.
Is there any way to check Plato’s picture of the trial against the views of theaverage Athenian?
We do have one piece of evidence which shows that even 50 years after the event, whenthere had been ample time for reflection and remorse the Athenians still regarded thetrial as political, and the verdict as justified.
Where did you find that?
In a speech by the famous orator Aeschines, the great rival ofDemosthenes, in the year 345 B.C., just 54 years after the trial of Socrates. This bit iswell known to scholars but its significance has never been fully appreciated. With theclue Aeschines provides, we may begin to reconstruct the Athenian political realities.Aeschines cited the case of Socrates as a praiseworthy precedent. 'Men ofAthens,' he said to the jury court, 'you executed Socrates, the sophist, becausehe was clearly responsible for the education of Critias, one of the thirty anti-democraticleaders.'
Who was Critias?
He was the bloodiest dictator Athens had ever known, a pupil of Socrates at one time,and a cousin of Plato’s. Aeschines was saying in effect that the antidemocraticteachings of Socrates helped to make a dictator of Critias, who terrorized Athens in 404B.C. during the regime of the Thirty Tyrants and just five years before the trial ofSocrates. Critias seemed to have been the most powerful member of the Thirty.
But why do you give so much weight to one sentence in one man’s speech to anAthenian jury court 50 years after the trial?
Aeschines could not have swayed the jury by that reference unless he was sayingsomething about the relations between Socrates and Critias which was generally accepted astrue by the Athenian public opinion of the time. Though 50 years had passed, thedictatorship of Critias and the Thirty Tyrants must still have been a hateful memory.Justly or unjustly, Socrates’s reputation still suffered from his association withCritias. The reference to Critias and Socrates proved effective demagogy. Aeschines wonhis case.
How do you account for the deep and enduring prejudice against Socrates in his nativecity?
To understand this, one must touch on a damaging fact few historians have explained, oreven mentioned, so great is the reverence for Socrates: Socrates remained in the cityall through the dictatorship of the Thirty Tyrants.
Why do you put that in italics?
Because that single fact must have accounted more than any other for the prejudiceagainst Socrates when the democracy was restored. The thirty Tyrants ruled only / 27 /about eight months, but it was a time of terror. In that period they executed 1,500Athenians and banished 5,000, one-tenth or more of the total population of men, women,children and slaves.
When the Thirty Tyrants took power, they murdered or drove out of the city all who wereof the democratic party. A few months later, the moderates who had originally supportedthe Thirty Tyrants began to flee, especially after Critias murdered their leader,Theramenes. He, who had been one of the original Thirty Tyrants, was executed without atrial when he began to criticize the Thirty Tyrants for their brutality.
Socrates was neither exiled with the democrats nor forced to flee with the moderateoppositionists. He did not suffer at the hands of the thirty Tyrants unlike his chiefaccuser, Anytus, who lost much of his property when he fled and joined the fight to freethe city. Socrates, in Plato’s 'Apology,' calls himself 'thegadfly' of Athens, but it seems his sting was not much in evidence when Athens neededit most.
How does Plato handle this in the 'Apology'?
He never mentions Critias, or his past as a pupil of Socrates, nor does he dwell on thefact that Socrates stayed in the city all through the dictatorship. Instead Plato hasSocrates represent himself as a man above the battle of politics.
How does Plato do that?
He has Socrates tell of two incidents in which he defied unjust orders, once under thedemocracy, and again under the Thirty Tyrants. Under the democracy, he was presidingofficer in the Assembly during the famous trial of ten generals accused of misconduct forfailing to succor survivors and recover the bodies of the slain after a naval victory.Socrates said he blocked the attempt to condemn them in one proceeding, because the lawcalled for a separate trial for each man. He added that he did so 'although theorators were ready to impeach and arrest me.'
Under the Thirty Tyrants, Socrates said, he had also resisted an unjust order. Socratesand four others had been ordered to arrest a wealthy resident alien whom the dictatorshipwanted to kill so they could seize his property. Such executions for revenue purposes werecommon under Critias.
Instead of obeying the order, Socrates says, 'I simply went home, and perhaps Ishould have been put to death for it, if the Government had not quickly been putdown.' But he himself neither helped put it down, nor tried to warn the victim, normade a protest. Though he was always preaching virtue, he did not, like the Hebrewprophets, call such unvirtuous rulers publicly to account.
But few modern readers know enough to resist Plato’s beguiling narrative, and itserves to distract attention from the fact that nowhere in the ancient texts do we findSocrates resisting or deploring the overthrow of the democracy, nor welcoming itsrestoration. With the jury, this silence must have outweighed his eloquence. Thedictatorship of the thirty Tyrants was the dictatorship of the wealthy landed aristocracyto which Plato and Critias belonged. This was the social circle from which most ofSocrates’s followers were drawn. Athens understood this, though the modern readeroften doesn’t.
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Does Xenophon – our other 'witness' on the trial – confront thesecompromising political circumstances?
Xenophon does so in is 'Memorabilia' by quoting an unnamed'accuser.' This accuser has been variously identified as one of the accusers atthe trial or as a contemporary prodemocratic orator named Polycrates whose'pamphlet' on the trial of Socrates has / 66 / since disappeared. In any case,Xenophon’s quotations from this accuser and his answer to these accusations provideus with some of the prosecution’s case against Socrates. In so doing, Xenophondiscloses much that Plato hides.
Where do you find the political issue in Xenophon?
In his 'memorabilia,' Xenophon reportsthat 'the accuser' said Socrates 'taught his pupils to look down upon theestablished laws’ by deriding the egalitarian method of filling many minor offices inAthens by lot, and by teaching them that government should be left to experts instead ofbeing determined by popular debate and vote in the assembly.
The 'accuser' said Socrates thus led the young 'to despise theestablished constitution and made them violent.' It is significant, but not oftennoticed, that Xenophon denies only the last part of this indictment. He could hardly denythe first two counts, since elsewhere in his memoirs of Socrates he frequently quotes theold philosopher’s contempt for the assembly and for election by lot. Xenophon passesover these accusations in silence. But he does deny that Socrates taught his pupils to useviolence against established institutions. Xenophon insists he taught them it was wiser toproceed by persuasion.
But Critias in power was hardly a model of persuasion.
Xenophon does not deny it. After all, our main source of knowledge about the misdeedsof Critias is Xenophon’s own history of his time, the 'Hellenica.' Xenophonquotes the accuser as declaring that 'none wrought so many evils' to the city ofAthens as Critias and Alcibiades, the two most famous pupils of Socrates. The accuser saidthat in the terrible days of the Thirty Tyrants, Critias 'bore the palm for greed andviolence,’ while Alcibiades ‘exceeded all in licentiousness and insolence'under the democracy.
What defense did Xenophon offer?
'I have no intention,' Xenophon replies inthe 'memorabilia,' of excusing the wrong these two men wrought thestate.' But he claims they sought out Socrates as their teacher 'only to attainthe utmost proficiency in speech and action.' And 'as soon as they thoughtthemselves superior to their fellow disciples, they sprang away from Socrates and took topolitics.' With that answer most Socratic scholars have been satisfied.
But you are not?
No. The question left open is / 28 / what kind of politics Socrates taught them.Clearly from everything we learn elsewhere in Plato and Xenophon, it was an antidemocraticpolitics. Xenophon’s silence on the point admits what he cannot deny.
Does the 'accuser' in Xenophon link the Socratic teachings with aristocraticattempts at tyranny, as in 411 and 404 B.C.?
Yes, but in a curious, indirect way. He alleged'that Socrates, selecting the worst passages of the most celebrated poets, and usingthem as arguments, taught those who kept him company [i.e. his pupils], to be unprincipledand tyrannical.'
Just what exactly did those terms mean?
A tyrant was someone who used violent and lawless methods to seize and maintain power.The term 'unprincipled' is one translation of the adjectival form of the Greekword kakourgos, which means, literally, an evil-doer. An Athenian would of courseapply both terms to such men as Critias and the Thirty Tyrants.
Does Xenophon deny that Socrates used quotations from the poets that might encouragesuch behavior?
He doesn’t enter an explicit denial. Instead Xenophon, who is ordinarily such aclear writer, gets fuzzy. This provoked my curiosity. In trying to find out why, Istumbled on some fresh material. I found that Xenophon made some striking omissions indiscussing this accusation, and the omissions obscured its significance.
What were the omissions?
First of all, in giving us examples from the poets to show what the accuser meant,Xenophon limits himself to two poets. We know from another source, the 'Apology'of Libanius, a fourth-century A.D. orator, that the 'accuser' of Socrates citedfour poets, not two, in this accusation. The two Xenophon omits are Theognis and Pindar.Both were aristocratic poets, notorious for their contempt, not only of the common peoplebut of the new middle class of merchants and traders who had begun to rival the old landedaristocracy. Pindar wrote his lovely odes to celebrate some of the outstanding tyrants ofhis time. By omitting Theognis and Pindar, Xenophon was omitting the most obvious examplesof what the accuser meant.
Who are the two poets Xenophon does quote?
Homer and Hesiod. But the quotations he gives seem to bear little, if any relationshipto the charge.
What do thequotations say?
The one from Hesiod says, 'Work is no disgrace, but idleness is a disgrace.'Hesiod was a farmer poet, and this is from his 'Works and Days,' a kind offarmer’s almanac. That line is his expression of the work ethic. I will not bore youwith my fruitless efforts to find any sense in which this trite but wholesome homily couldpossibly be interpreted as teaching tyrannical conduct. Hesiod was no aristocrat but ahard-working Boetian peasant who hated tyranny. I think the Hesiod quote has been screwedup for evasive purposes.
What of the quotation from Homer?
Here we come to pay dirt. At first, the quotation from Homer, as given by Xenophon inthe 'memorabilia,' also seems to bear little relationship to the accusation. Itlong puzzled me. I went to the commentators on the 'Memorabilia' without findingany enlightenment. Then I did what none of the commentators I read had done: I went backto Homer and took a look at the context of the quotation. There I found Xenophon had madetwo omissions, and suddenly I saw what the accuser was driving at. Here I believe I havefound fresh insight.
Is this a 'scoop' – if I may use so unscholarly a word?
I believe so. But to appreciate it, one must understand what Homer meant to the Greeks.He was their Bible. And with them as with us, the devil could quote Scripture to hispurpose. A quotation from Homer was effective as Holy Writ, and the two omissions Xenophonmakes are of two passages which would have infuriated an Athenian democrat, but would havedelighted an anti-democratic aristocrat – because they would seem fully to justifyviolent methods in putting down the democracy.
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Can you tell us what was the Homeric episode referred to by the 'accuser' inXenophon?
It is in thesecond book of the 'Iliad.' The siege of Troy has been going on for nineyears. The homesick and weary troops, just recently devastated by a plague, make amutinous rush for the ships, determined to set sail for home. Odysseus, the man of manywiles, intervenes to stem the panic.
How does Xenophon handle the episode?
He makes his quotations so minimal and selective as to blur the point of theaccusation, and make it easier for Socrates to evade it. Xenophon quotes lines 188 to 191,and then skips to lines 198 to 202 from Book II of the 'Iliad.'
In lines 188 to 191, Homer describes how Odysseus spoke 'with gentle words'to the chieftains and aristocrats, while he tells us in lines 198 to 202 how differentlyhe dealt with the common soldiers. When the angry hero encountered 'a man of thepeople,' Odysseus 'struck him with his staff,' calling him 'aworthless fellow' and ordering him to turn back from the ships.
How would an Athenian react to this scene?
Very negatively. He was not used to being treated as an inferior either in peace orwar. Xenophon’s account in the 'Anabasis' of how he led his 10,000mercenary Greek troops across Persia has been justly called a picture of 'a democracyon the march.'
Was anything important omitted in quoting these lines?
Yes. Xenophon omitted the last four lines of the speech made by Odysseus as he struckand reviled the common soldiers. In those four / 69 / omitted lines Odysseus attacked theidea of democracy altogether. Homer in these lines sets forth for the first time inWestern literature the doctrine of the divine right of kinds. Here are the lines, inliteral translation. Odysseus tells the common soldiers:
We Achaeans can’t all be kings here
It is not good for the many to rule.
Let one man rule, one man be king,
To whom the son [Zeus] of wily Cronos
Has given the sceptre and the judgments
That he may take counsel for you.
It is not good for the many to rule.
Let one man rule, one man be king,
To whom the son [Zeus] of wily Cronos
Has given the sceptre and the judgments
That he may take counsel for you.
That’s the doctrine of one man rule, and that’s just what Critias tried toimpose on Athens. Xenophon could have denied that Socrates used these lines, or approvedthem. Instead Xenophon omitted them. The omission is a confession. These famous lines onkingship were too obviously anti-democratic teaching.
What was the third of the significant omissions to which you referred?
Xenophon omitted any mention of theassembly called by King Agamemnon to deal with the near mutiny. Assemblies arefrequent in the 'Iliad.' This one turned out to be unique. It was the onlyassembly in all of Homer where a common soldier spoke up in the debate. His name wasThersites, or The Brash One. To an Athenian, as to us, he thus represents the firststirrings of democracy in the Homeric assemblies.
What happened to Thersites?
Odysseus beat the bold commoner until he bled, humiliated him in front of the army andthreatened to kill him if he ever spoke up again.
How does Homer treat this scene?
With approval. Homer sang his great lays in the halls of the rich and powerful, andclearly shows whose side he is on. Homer does not make Thersites a hero, but a shrill andvulgar upstart. Few peoples have been as sensitive to beauty in form and in speech as theancient Greeks. Homer paints Thersites as bandy-legged, lame, hunchbacked and bald. Onewonders how such a cripple ever got into the army at all. The words Thersites uses aremade as repulsive as his appearance. Homer calls them akosma. This is the negativeof kosmos, whence our words 'cosmetics' and 'cosmos' derive.The word implies disorder and lack of grace.
So what do you make of these omissions?
The accuser had charged that Socrates used certain passages from Homer to teach hisyoung aristocratic followers to be violent and tyrannical. In dealing with this mutinousepisode, Xenophon omitted what the Athenian democrats would have regarded as the mostsubversive part of it: the four lines on the divine right of kings, and Odysseus’suse of violence to suppress free speech in the assembly.
Homer was saying that the common people had no right to be heard. There could be nomore sensitive point with the Athenian democrats. The right to speak freely in theassembly was the foundation stone of Athenian democracy. Until the reforms of Solon, twocenturies before the trial of Socrates, the common people of Athens could neither speaknor vote in the assembly. And again, just five years before the trial of Socrates, theyhad been forcibly deprived of this precious right by the dictatorship of Critias. In theireyes, this episode in Homer would seem to justify the violent tyranny they had so recentlyoverthrown. I think that is why Xenophon omitted it from his defense of Socrates. Theywere too damaging a part of the prosecution’s case.
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