Xenophon's interpretation of Socrates' appearance is dif- ferent again. For him, Socrates' supposed ugliness shows that conventional ideals of beauty are wrong-headed. The 'beauty myths' of classical Athenian culture have created a false disjunction between attractiveness and practical usefulness. Socrates tells a pretty young boy, 'My eyes are more beautiful than yours, because yours only look straight ahead, whereas mine bulge out and can look to the sides as well' (Xenophon, Symposium 5.1-10). Socrates' broad snub nose allows him to sniff scents from all around, whereas elegant straight noses can only smell what is directly below them. Thick lips are more useful for kissing. A broad mouth can gobble up more food. All this is only partly a joke. Xenophon's Socrates is urging us to realise that if we find him ugly, perhaps it is our eyes, or our cultural preconcep- tions about beauty, that are to blame.
Both Plato and Xenophon hint at the major reason Socrates' strange appearance bothered people so much. He seemed to treat his apparent inferiority (his ugliness) as a form of superiority. Socrates' ugliness seemed to work as a living criticism of ordinary ways of seeing. This implication is explicit in Aristophanes' Clouds, which satirises Socrates for looking funny as well as for his philosophical beliefs. The Chorus of Clouds greet their friend Socrates with a detailed description of his appearance:
You waddle in the streets and cast your eyes sideways,
and go barefoot, enduring a great deal of suffering, but put on
a hoity-toity expression because of us Clouds.
(362-3)
The reference here to Socrates' 'hoity-toity' expression goes to the heart of the difficulty the Athenians had with his appearance. His strangeness seemed to present itself as a criticism of the values of ordinary people.
Some aspects of Socrates' physical appearance, such as his snub nose, could hardly be considered his fault - although, as we have seen, an ancient physiognomist might treat the configuration of a person's features as a sign of his charac- ter. But many aspects of Socrates' strange looks were clearly the result of strange attitudes about what matters in life. For example, he deliberately dressed poorly, wearing a single cloak both summer and winter. He went for long periods without eating or drinking or sleeping: when struck by a problem, he could happily stay up all night to work it out. He could bear extremes of hot and cold, without complaint or even seeming to notice anything wrong. Socrates' asceti- cism was seen by his friends and followers as a sign of his willpower, and recognition that money and material com- forts do not matter. But to many of his contemporaries, it smacked of showing off.
Socrates' manner of speaking was, like his manner of dress, deliberately 'poor' or demotic. He was famous for his analogies between philosophy and the activities of common tradesmen - shoemakers, potters or doctors.
As we have seen, Socrates' poverty was not a mere matter of necessity. It was a deliberate and conscious position, assumed by a man who could have made himself enormously rich. Other sophists earned huge sums by their teaching.
Socrates is said to have been the son of Sophroniscus, a sculptor, and Phaenarete, a midwife. He was not an aristo- crat, or rich by birth. Socrates himself, we are told, began life in his father's profession and carved the draped figures of the Graces on the Acropolis. But in later life he certainly had no day job. He seemed to be always at leisure, always willing and able to conduct conversations lasting all day and long into the night. Since he did not charge fees for his teaching, he must have survived on gifts and tips from his rich friends - of whom he had many. In Plato's account of Socrates' trial, the master is willing to accept money from Plato himself and other friends, which he can offer to pay as a fine. The sum involved is fairly substantiaclass="underline" thirty minae was equivalent to roughly a year's work for a day labourer. This amount was six times Socrates' whole wealth.
Refusing on principle to earn a regular income may seem morally admirable if you see materialism as a moral failing. But from another perspective, it may seem simply fraudulent to make much of poverty, if you always have rich friends to help out when things get tough. There must have been many low-income Athenians who had no con- nections in high places, and who would have seen Socrates' deliberate assumption of poverty as Marie Antoinette-ish.
Plato's account (in his Symposium) of Socrates' behaviour in the army hints at what many fellow Athenians must have felt about him. In freezing conditions, in which all the other soldiers were bundling themselves up in their warmest clothes, 'This man [Socrates] went out wearing his regular kind of cloak, and even barefoot he walked on the ice more easily than everybody else with their boots on. So the soldiers looked at him with suspicion, thinking that he was looking down on them' (Symposium 220b). The passage makes clear that Socrates' gaze - his way of looking at people - implied contempt for many people, and made them, in turn, look back at him with frowning mistrust.
Socrates' asceticism had political implications as well. Aristophanes mocked the followers of Socrates for display- ing their hollow cheeks and dishevelled clothes: 'All men went crazy for Sparta: it was considered honourable to grow your hair long and to go hungry, and people gave up washing - like Socrates' (Birds 1280-83). In refusing material comforts, Socrates seemed to be echoing the aesthetic of Athens' great enemy, who were also known for their deliberate assump- tion of poverty. Socrates was Spartan in his hardiness, his arrogant false modesty and his asceticism. Only one thing made him different from the Spartans in his behaviour: his conversation, which was hardly laconic.
Socrates was an Athenian who behaved like a foreigner. Indeed, his whole life's work as a philosopher could be seen not merely as undemocratic, but as fundamentally un- Athenian. Unlike almost all the other sophists and teachers of rhetoric in the city, Socrates was an Athenian, by birth, citizenship and inclination. He looked at his fellow citizens with a gaze that mirrored, but subverted, their own.
Most of the sophists were foreigners from other Greek cities. One prominent teacher of rhetoric, Gorgias, came from Leontinoi in Sicily; Protagoras, a moral philosopher, came from Abdera in Thrace; Anaxagoras was from Clazomenae in Asia Minor; another famous sophist, Hippias, was from Elis in the western Peloponnesus. None of these figures was a citizen of Athens. The norm, then, was that foreigners taught rich Athenians to ask hard questions about physics, rhetoric, religion or politics. The sophists often emphasised their own rootlessness. Gorgias boasted that he 'had no fixed dwelling in any city', as Diogenes Laertius tells us. Another of the sophists, Aristippus, commented on his own situation: 'I am a stranger everywhere.' The sophists were cosmopoli- tans - citizens of the world.
Athens was beginning to be accustomed to the idea of foreign intellectuals who could contribute to the life of the city by educating the young and stimulating new ideas. If a foreigner questioned the values of the city, he was merely doing what foreigners do. But for an Athenian insider such as Socrates to take on this role must have posed a quite differ- ent kind of threat. An Athenian who undermined Athenian values was a traitor to the beliefs of his forefathers.
Socrates appropriated the role and language of foreign outsiders, despite his own position as an Athenian citizen. It is telling from this perspective that in Plato's Apology Socrates asks the jury to excuse his ignorance of the rules of rhetoric, just as they would excuse him if he really were a foreigner:
The fact is that this is the first time I have come before the court, even though I am seventy years old. I am therefore an utter foreigner as far as courtroom speaking goes. So now I make what I think is a fair request of you: disre- gard my manner of speaking. Pardon me if I speak in that manner in which I have been raised, just as you would if I really were a foreigner. (Apology 17d-18a)