The Last Days of Socrates Read online

  THE LAST DAYS OF SOCRATES

  PLATO (c. 427–347 BC) stands with Socrates and Aristotle as one of the shapers of the whole intellectual tradition of the West. He came from a family that had long played a prominent part in Athenian politics, and it would have been natural for him to follow the same course. He declined to do so, however, disgusted by the violence and corruption of Athenian political life, and sickened especially by the execution in 399 of his friend and teacher, Socrates. Inspired by Socrates’ inquiries into the nature of ethical standards, Plato sought a cure for the ills of society not in politics but in philosophy, and arrived at his fundamental and lasting conviction that those ills would never cease until philosophers became rulers or rulers philosophers. At an uncertain date in the early fourth century BC he founded in Athens the Academy, the first permanent institution devoted to philosophical research and teaching, and the prototype of all western universities. He travelled extensively, notably to Sicily as political adviser to Dionysius II, ruler of Syracuse. Plato wrote over twenty philosophical dialogues, and there are also extant under his name thirteen letters, whose genuineness is keenly disputed. His literary activity extended over perhaps half a century: few other writers have exploited so effectively the grace and precision, the flexibility and power, of Greek prose.

  HUGH TREDENNICK was born in 1899 and educated at King Edward’s, Birmingham, and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he got a double first in Classics. He was Professor of Classics at Royal Holloway College from 1946 until 1966. He was Dean of the Faculty of Arts at London University from 1956 to 1960, and joint editor of the Classical Review from 1961 to 1967. His translation of Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates is a Penguin Classic, and he also edited and translated works by Aristotle. He died in 1982.

  HAROLD TARRANT was born in Slough, England, in 1946, and studied at Cambridge and Durham universities. He taught in the Department of Greek (subsequently Classics) at the University of Sydney until 1993, when he was appointed Professor of Classics at the University of Newcastle, New South Wales. His publications include Scepticism or Platonism? (1985), Thrasyllan Platonism (1993), Olympiodorus: On Plato’s Gorgias (1998) and Plato’s First Interpreters (2000). He is currently involved in a project funded by the Australian Research Council on Neoplatonic interpretations of Plato. He has been keenly involved in the promotion of chess and bird-watching.

  PLATO

  The Last Days of Socrates

  Euthyphro · Apology

  Crito · Phaedo

  Translated by HUGH TREDENNICK

  and HAROLD TARRANT

  Introduction and Notes by

  HAROLD TARRANT

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  PENGUIN BOOKS

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

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  This translation first published 1954

  New edition, with additions, 1959

  Reprinted with revisions, 1969

  Revised translation with new introduction and notes 1993

  Reprinted with updated Further Reading 2003

  1

  Copyright © Hugh Tredennick, 1954, 1959, 1969

  Copyright © Harold Tarrant, 1993, 2003

  All rights reserved

  The moral right of the new translator has been asserted

  Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

  9780141915913

  Contents

  Chronology

  Preface

  General Introduction

  Further Reading

  A Note on the Texts

  Euthyphro – Holiness

  Socrates in Confrontation

  Apology – Justice and Duty (i)

  Socrates Speaks at his Trial

  Crito – Justice and Duty (ii)

  Socrates in Prison

  Phaedo – Wisdom and the Soul

  Socrates about to Die

  Postscript: The Theory of Ideas in the Phaedo

  Notes

  Index

  Chronology

  469 BC Birth of Socrates.

  c. 435 BC Socrates already active in intellectual debate, as seen in Plato’s Protagoras.

  432 BC Socrates involved in the Potidaean campaign between Athens and Sparta.

  431 BC Start of the Peloponnesian War.

  c. 428 BC Birth of Plato.

  424 BC Socrates displays courage in the defeat at Delium.

  423 BC Performance of Aristophanes’ The Clouds, mocking Socrates.

  406 BC Battle of Arginusae – Socrates objects to the illegal decision to prosecute the generals involved.

  404 BC Peloponnesian War ends; Regime of the Thirty established at Athens.

  404 BC Socrates defies the orders of the Thirty to arrest Leon of Salamis.

  403 BC Restoration of democracy in Athens.

  399 BC Trial and death of Socrates.

  c. 395 BC Plato writing his earliest dialogues, perhaps including the first three in this volume.

  c. 385 BC Plato established as a teacher in Athens.

  384 BC Birth of Aristotle.

  c. 380 BC Date sometimes offered for the composition of the Phaedo.

  347 BC Death of Plato.

  Preface

  Hugh Tredennick’s The Last Days of Socrates has helped introduce these works of Plato to countless readers. It has been part of an important project which has made great literature accessible to all sorts of readers. Since 1954, however, much has changed in Platonic studies; as a result the original volume was being outshone by many of the newer Plato translations in the Penguin series. I have tried to write a more extended general introduction, taking account of modern directions in the study of Plato, but without straying into the kind of technicalities which the general reader would find problematic.

  I believe that Tredennick was well justified in incorporating these four Platonic works into the same volume, for they make a satisfying and in many ways enlightening combination. It is extremely useful to have the Phaedo in the same volume as the other three works, though because of its literary qualities and philosophic rigour it may seem to have deserved a volume, of its own. There have been several annotated translations dedicated to that work alone, and yet there is merit in refusing to be drawn too far along the path towards producing a full commentary. Many readers will not need in-depth discussion of Platonic metaphysics in order to appreciate a work of this power; some will find too much commentary tedious. I have tried to steer a middle course here between unhelpful shallows and mystifying depths. The reader who is still ready for a further challenge will find a number of suggestions in the bibliography.

  HAROLD TARRANT

  Sydney

  March 1992 and July 2002

  General Introduction

 
; PLATONIC LITERATURE

  The works of Plato, with few exceptions, are fully philosophy and fully literature. He therefore presents a double task for the interpreter, and at times a more complex task still. For his works abound with mathematical examples, illustrations from a variety of walks of Athenian life, quasi-religious myths and quasi-rhetorical speeches. The true interpreter must somehow try to match Plato’s tremendous breadth of interest as well as his philosophical depths. Ideally he will see himself as a philosopher, mathematician, historian, speech-maker, literary critic and as a moral and religious being. It is not surprising that over the ages interpreters have failed the test. Platonic scholarship is still moving, and still for the most part moving forward, but there will always be a further challenge: more to do, more to understand.

  Yet whereas the ideal Platonic interpreter is as remote an ideal as Plato’s Ideal State in the Republic, there are countless numbers who are attracted to his works because they have one or more of those interests which coincide with his. Because he can appeal to us as literature or as philosophy or as religion or as a source for Greek society, etc., he attracts a multitude of readers with a variety of special interests.

  His works have the qualities which allow them to be interpreted, and reasonably interpreted, in many ways and from many points of view. This has much to do with the fact that they take the form of dialogues, rather than treatises addressed to the reader. We are not directly asked to believe anything; we are not required to take anything on trust. We are asked to be spectators at an occasion, whether historical or fictitious, when lifelike characters talked on real issues, issues which are sometimes remote from us but which we can feel were pressing ones for them. We are asked to react to human experience and human ideas, for which we, as human beings, have some understanding. We are asked to listen to the arguments critically; we are also asked to respond to the personalities of those participating. We may be encouraged to learn certain lessons and to form certain conclusions as a result; but many of the problems superficially seem left unresolved, and we are not bullied into taking the author’s line. Consequently Plato’s dialogues have continued to have appeal over the ages, and have survived numerous changes of intellectual and religious fashion, for somebody has always found something of value within them.

  The term ‘dialogue’ in fact embraces a wide variety of works. We shall meet in this volume the Apology, which in most respects resembles other law-court speeches which have come down to us; it is essentially a monologue, interrupted only by a short cross-examination of the principal accuser, Meletus. But cross-examination also occurs in other forensic speeches,1 and the skilful characterization of Socrates has parallels in the contemporary speeches of Lysias, which are likewise tailored to bring out (in the most attractive and sympathetic light possible) the character of the speaker. Plato’s Menexenus has a brief dramatic introduction, but is otherwise little more than a mock funeral-speech for a public burial, apparently parodying the Periclean funeral speech from Book 2 of Thucydides. In the Critias another short dramatic introduction leads into something more like a novel – except that it is a novel without any individual personalities. In the Symposium dialogue provides a frame for seven related speeches; in the Phaedrus it is a frame for a rich mixture of speeches, myth and argument.

  Perhaps the earliest fundamental division of Plato’s works to be widely accepted was that into dramatic and narrative works.2 A ‘dramatic’ work, in this technical sense, was one in which the main conversation was written in a form rather like a drama. Only the words supposedly spoken were written down by the author, though ancient scholars soon added the speakers’ names for ease of reading. The speakers were originally identified by the way in which they frequently named each other as they conversed. There were limitations inherent in this kind of presentation, in so far as every time the writer wanted to draw attention to actions or to the appearance of the participants, he had to have one of the speakers comment upon what was happening. It is also difficult to handle many characters simultaneously within the ‘dramatic’ dialogue, for one might easily lose track of who was supposed to be speaking. Consequently, where Plato has to handle a large number of characters, as for example in the Protagoras or the Symposium, or where the argument is to be accompanied by a great deal of action, he inclines towards presenting the conversation in the form of a narrative. This narrative often, but not always, emerges out of a short ‘dramatic’ introduction where the narrator converses with somebody eager to hear the tale, as in the Phaedo.

  Plato is best known for his dialogues which involved Socrates in conversation; only a few later works employ other characters as the chief speaker, while the Laws alone omits him entirely. Socratic dialogues were not exclusive to Plato. They were written by a number of followers of Socrates, and it was a natural form for these writers to adopt. They wanted to depict Socrates in action, i.e. in conversation: for Socratic philosophy can only be truly realized through question and answer. We have plenty of examples of Socratic conversations in the works of Xenophon, most notably his Memorabilia.3 These are all in the narrated form, even though Xenophon does not exploit the advantages of that form in the way that Plato can. It is very likely that the narrated form was favoured by other well-known writers of Socratic dialogues, such as Antisthenes and Aeschines.4

  A famous passage of Diogenes Laertius (3.48) gives Plato the credit for the introduction of the philosophic dialogue, allegedly after he had developed great enthusiasm for the ‘mimes’ (brief non-philosophical dramatic sketches) of Sophron. A fuller parallel passage in an Oxyrhynchus papyrus published by M. Haslam in 1976 (P. Oxy. 3219, fr. I) makes it clear that it is the dramatic dialogue which is supposed to have owed so much to Plato.5 We may suppose that with his great dramatic talents, which may at one time have been encouraging him to write tragedies, Plato was able to inject extra life into bare dramatic sketches, which, like other prose works, were probably read aloud by the author in the first instance. To read a narrated work one only had to play one character, the narrator; to read a dramatic work one had to become a minimum of two.6 Playing such a double role seems to have been considered educationally dangerous at Republic 394b ff., but all the same Theaetetus 143c speaks as if Plato had begun to see the perpetual inclusion of such phrases as ‘I said’ and ‘He agreed’ as unnecessarily cumbersome. Dramatic works often have a freshness and immediacy about them. We enter directly, often quite suddenly and with little or no introductory conversation,7 into the world of Socratic debate. The Euthyphro and Crito are examples of such works. By contrast, narrated dialogues, particularly the Phaedo, Symposium and Parmenides where setting of the introductory dialogue is remote from the action, ease us gradually into the world of Socratic legend.

  It should be clear to virtually any reader that Plato greatly enjoyed writing, and enlisting his literary powers in the service of philosophy. We are confronted, however, with a well-known passage of his Phaedrus (275c ff.) which questions whether written compositions have any serious purpose. Certainly Plato valued face-to-face teaching more than any written message which he left behind, but an important part of his criticism of the written word concerns its habit of addressing all alike; moreover the literature criticized always says the same thing when the reader tries to ask it questions. The dialogues, however, are asking us the questions, and as we change ourselves so do the answers. For an author who had a fear of the finality of the published word, Plato did at least choose the most flexible form of composition possible, and the effort which has gone into many of his compositions clearly demonstrates that he usually took his activities as an author with considerable seriousness.

  Seriousness, of course, does not mean that the dialogues are all serious in tone. A work like the Euthydemus is distinctly comic for the most part, and the Euthyphro is another work with important comic elements, ridiculing not only Meletus and Euthyphro, but ‘Daedalan’ Socrates as well (see 11c–e). Even in the sombre setting of the Phaedo there is room for the occas
ional joke. Irony and caricature play their part from time to time. Humour spices the dialogues, as do some of Socrates’ grotesque analogies and charming tales. Humour invites the reader in, and sometimes an erotic element plays this role. But once we have been captured Plato does not waste the opportunity to make us think. He may even try to persuade us to adopt his own beliefs.

  Plato’s principal tool of persuasion is of course argument. There are two particular terms which are often used in this context, elenchus and dialectic. The former is Socrates’ means of examining the soundness of the views of others. Typically an interlocutor will make a moral claim that Socrates cannot accept. He then secures the interlocutor’s assent to some further proposition or group of propositions, and, accepting these, proceeds to demonstrate that they are inconsistent with the original claim. It is a tool for the exposure of problems with beliefs and inconsistencies in sets of beliefs rather than for demonstrating what is true and what is false.8 It makes considerable use of inductive arguments. It is the weapon employed in the Euthyphro, for example, or in the cross-examination of Meletus in the Apology. It is not, however, characteristic of the Crito or the Phaedo. In the latter work Socrates is not trying to expose the false beliefs of others so much as attempting to give a thoroughly argued justification of his own deep-rooted beliefs. To such reasoned justification the term ‘dialectic’ would apply. The term is derived from the verb ‘to converse’, and need mean no more than ‘conversational art’ – not the art of polite conversation, but the art of employing person-to-person discussion in such a way as to come nearer to the truth of a given issue. The teaching of dialectic is to constitute the culmination of the education of the Guardians in Book 7 of Plato’s Republic.