Socrates' death seemed to Cicero rather distant from the real world. He repeatedly compared it with other, more explicitly political deaths. Cato provides one such example. Another is a statesman called Theramenes, who was put to death by Critias in the time of the Thirty Tyrants. Like Socrates, he was made to drink hemlock in prison. As he drank, he made a toast: 'To the health of beautiful Critias', he said. Cicero admires 'this noble man, who joked even with his last breath' (Tusculanian Disputations 1.97). Socrates drank the hemlock quietly, but he made no witticism while doing so. Theramenes, not Socrates, offers a good model for how to behave with dignity in that important Roman situa- tion: when forced to commit suicide by a tyrant.
Cicero undermines the idea that Socrates taught us how to die by his own actions in death:
Let me warn you against allowing any man to rival Cato in your admiration - including the man whom the oracle of Apollo apparently declared to be the wisest of the whole human race. The truth is that the memory of Socrates is honoured for the good teaching he delivered, but Cato's memory is honoured for the glorious deeds he performed. (De Amiticia 10)
The passage offers very backhanded praise even for Socrates as a teacher. He can only tell us what to do, not show us the way by example. Better moral teaching is offered by Cato's moral firmness. We can hear in Cicero an echo of Cato the Elder's dismissal of Socrates as a mere 'Greek chatterbox'.
Cicero's own violent death was different from either the calm, philosophical death of Socrates or the suicidal gore of the younger Cato. Cicero was vehemently opposed to
Mark Antony, who seized power after the assassination of Julius Caesar in 44 bc. Cicero's voluminous correspondence during the last two years of his life constantly echoes the central issue of Plato's Crito. Cicero worried about whether to remain loyal to his country and its laws, now that bad men were in power; whether it would be a betrayal of prin- ciple to escape Rome and go into safety in exile; and whether he should, like Cato or Socrates, kill himself. Cicero dithered long enough to ensure his death. He was caught by a group of assassins, who cut off his head and his hands in revenge for the speeches he had written against Antony.
Cicero achieved a kind of dignity in death, different from that of either Socrates or Cato. He died in transit, on a dusty road, a death not planned or stage-managed, but accepted bravely when it finally came. As Plutarch tells us, 'Stroking his chin, as he used to do, with his left hand, he looked stead- fastly upon his murderers, his person covered with dust, his beard and hair untrimmed, and his face worn with his trou- bles.' Gadflies were treated more gently in the old Athenian days. Those who provoked and challenged Rome's new rulers would get no merciful hemlock.
seneca, stoicism and learning how to die
For Roman philosophers, images of Socrates were filtered through third- and second-century Greek philosophy. Two Hellenistic 'schools' in particular affected Roman attitudes towards Socrates: the Cynics and the Stoics. For the Cynics, Socrates was admirable for his lack of interest in worldly possessions. For the Stoics, he represented the ideal wise man who could resist pain, political pressure and the fear of death. More than any of the other Hellenistic and Roman philosophical groups who could trace their origins back to Socrates (including Cynics, Academics, Peripatetics, Hedonists and Sceptics), Stoics emphasised the death of Socrates over his life and teaching. Stoics were the main intellectual heirs of Socrates' claim in the Phaedo that the life- long task of philosophy is learning how to die. As Epictetus remarked, 'The remembrance of the death of Socrates is more useful to the world than that of the things which he did and said when alive' (Discourses 4.1).
Epictetus, an influential Stoic philosopher who lived in the first and second centuries ad (c. ad 55-135), treated the dying Socrates as the most important model for contempo- rary Stoics to follow. He insisted, 'Death is not a bad thing, or else it would have seemed so to Socrates' (Enchiridion 5). The model of Socrates' death can make us all brave when our time comes.
A free-born slave, Epictetus was exiled from Rome by the emperor Domitian. He withdrew to northern Greece and set up a school at a safe distance from the centre of the empire. Epictetus saw Socrates as an image of how to behave under political tyranny. He returned repeatedly to the paradox that Socrates' death brought him integrity. The death of Socrates shows us how we can be free, even under oppression. 'The Socrates who resisted the tyrants and held discourses on virtue and moral beauty is preserved by dying instead of running away ...', Epictetus tells us, 'He faced the Thirty Tyrants as a free man.' This is a kind of freedom that is available to any individual but does not precipitate political change.
The Roman Stoic philosopher Seneca the Younger (ad 4-65) anticipates Epictetus in his obsession with the death of Socrates. Like Epictetus, Seneca treats death as the climactic event of Socrates' life. He declared, 'Cicuta magnum Socratem fecit' ('It was hemlock that made Socrates great') (Epistles 13.14). This line suggests that Socrates would have been nothing without his death.
Because Socrates died as he did, he was transformable into a Stoic hero. But Seneca reinterprets the death of Socrates to make it suit Roman cultural expectations. He puts pain into the centre of the story. Plato's Socrates is calm and does not seem to suffer. Seneca's Socrates is a man who puts up with endless suffering, in a properly Stoic spirit. He endured poverty, a bad marriage, intractable children, toil, military service, life under tyranny, enmity and finally an indict- ment, prison and death. Through all this, he never indulged in excessive emotion; he was never, says Seneca, seen either unusually cheerful or unusually melancholy - 'He remained even-tempered in all the unevenness of his fortunes' (Epistles 104.27). Socrates' death teaches a Stoic lesson: even pain and misfortune can do us good.
Seneca insists on Socrates as the model for a philosophic life: 'If you desire a model, take Socrates.' But Seneca is also aware of some obvious dangers in the Roman rhetorical reliance on the death of Socrates and other famous deaths - including those of Cato and Theramenes. Perhaps copying other people's behaviour is not really the best way to learn to be good. The result of repeating 'inspirational' stories over and over again may be that it becomes impossible to hear them, just as one cannot look with fresh eyes at the Mona Lisa. Perhaps, as Cicero suspected, the example of this famous Greek philosopher was of little use in the political realities of contemporary Rome.
Seneca explicitly addresses this problem. He cites all the usual suspects who are referred to in arguments against the fear of death, including Socrates: 'Socrates conducted a philosophical discussion in prison, and when there were people who promised him escape, he refused and remained, in order to free mankind from fear of the two most terri- ble things, death and imprisonment' (Epistles 24). But then Seneca imagines that the reader may be unimpressed by the cliche: 'You say, all those anecdotes have been told over and over in all the schools; now, since the subject is despis- ing death, you'll be telling about Cato.' Sure enough, Cato's death is next up.