the irrelevance of intellectuals: plutarch and diogenes laertius
The marginalisation of philosophy, as a speciality occupa- tion or profession, had an enormous impact on the represent- ation of Socrates' life and death in the later Roman Empire. Plutarch, a Greek writer who lived in the first and second centuries ad, remarked that Socrates was 'the first to show that life at all times and in all parts, in all that we suffer and do, always admits philosophy'. But he was also conscious that it may be difficult to integrate our more obviously 'phil- osophical' activities with the hurly-burly of political and military action.
Plutarch's essay 'On the Daimonion of Socrates' uses this topic to mediate on the position of intellectuals in a time of political revolution. It combines historical narrative with philosophical dialogue, on the model of Plato's Phaedo. The scene is the city of Thebes one night in December 379 bc. Thebes had been taken over by a Sparta tyranny and many of the most prominent native inhabitants had fled the city. But the exiles are due to return and have plotted a coup to oust the Spartans and take back Thebes for the Thebans.
The house of Simmias - one of the main characters in Plato's Phaedo - is the meeting place for the Theban con- spirators. While those already inside the city are waiting for the exiles to return, they discuss whether one needs philoso- phy in order to behave well in politics. Perhaps the bloody takeover of Thebes is out of keeping with philosophical truth. Perhaps philosophers should stay away from killing. Perhaps they should shun all political action. But in that case there is a danger that philosophy will seem irrelevant to the decisions made by politicians in power.
This suspicion is confirmed when the conversation turns to the divine sign of Socrates (the daimonion). The characters disagree about what Socrates' sign actually was: one argues that the gods spoke directly to him, while another suggests that he was guided by any random occurrence - such as a sneeze. But all the participants in the conversation agree on one thing: that reason alone cannot be the sole guide for human action. Even Socrates himself used his 'sign', not phi- losophy, when he wanted to make a decision about anything that mattered. Plutarch's text expresses a common worry of his time: that philosophy may be useless in the real world of politics and war.
Diogenes Laertius, who wrote a set of Lives and Opinions of the Famous Philosophers in the third century ad, also reflected the idea that intellectuals are somehow cut off from the reali- ties of politics. He presented Socrates as a suffering sage whose only hope of getting his own back on those who mock and thump him is by neat little witticisms. He often gets beaten up when he goes to the agora to discuss his opinions. One day, after he has been pounded and kicked by the populace, a friend expresses surprise that he bears it so willingly. Socrates answers, 'If a donkey kicked you, should I take out a lawsuit against him?' The anti-democratic sentiment is familiar from Plato, but the degree of indignity suffered by Socrates is not.
Diogenes allows Socrates to endure physical as well as verbal humiliation. His memorable anecdotes work to dis- tance the philosopher from the rest of us: Socrates was pecu- liar and different from everybody else.
Diogenes emphasises Socrates' bad relationship with his nagging wife, or perhaps wives. He tells us that Socrates was a bigamist who was married to Myrto as well as Xanthippe. Like Xenophon, Diogenes emphasises Socrates' ability to deal calmly with a shrewish wife. He reports that one day Xanthippe yelled at her husband and then threw a bowl of slops on his head. Socrates comments, 'Did I not say that Xanthippe's thunder would end in rain?' Xenophon made Xanthippe a nag, but drew the line at chamber pots.
Diogenes introduces a story that became influential in the later tradition: after the death of Socrates, the Athenians deeply regretted what they had done and put up a monument in his memory. The story reinforces the idea that philosophers are never appreciated in their own time. Intellectuals live in an ivory tower, and their ideas are always misunderstood during their life. Philosophy can never be part of the real world. Theory is divorced from practice. These notions are still with us today.
egotism and the drama of socratic death
For many under the Roman Empire, the dying Socrates seemed too theatrical as well as too theoretical. Lucian, a brilliant comic writer and rhetorician of the second century ad, suggests that imitating Socrates' death is a ridiculously exhibitionistic enterprise.
Lucian reveals, in true tabloid fashion, the dark secrets of celebrities from myth and history. Cerberus, the dog who guards the Underworld, claims that Socrates died bravely only in order to show off to the spectators. His death was not really his own choice. He pretended that he was 'really ready to suffer willingly what he had to undergo anyhow, in order to make the spectators admire his behaviour'.
Lucian tells us that his own time has known just two noble philosophers: Sostratus, also known as Heracles, who was renowned for his extraordinary size and physical strength (about whom Lucian wrote another treatise, now lost); and Demonax, who was, he says, his own teacher. Demonax was, we learn, an eclectic thinker, though 'he probably had most in common with Socrates'. But he was 'a Socrates without the irony', by which Lucian seems to mean that he was more tactful than the Platonic Socrates. He knew how to avoid offending people.
Like his prototype, Demonax was accused of impiety. But Demonax managed to charm even those Athenians who held stones in their hands, ready to hurl at him. He died of his own volition, calmly and cheerfully. He starved himself to death, not forgetting to offer characteristic pieces of advice up to the very end. His death is in many ways comparable to the death of Socrates, down to the philosopher's insistence on not needing a big funeral. But when Demonax is asked how he would like to be buried, he replies, 'Don't bother; the stench will get me buried in the end.' Plato's Socrates insisted that it is only his body, not himself, whom Crito will bury. Demonax identifies himself with his own stinking corpse. In Lucian's eyes, Demonax, unlike Socrates, kept it real.
A text by Lucian about a different contemporary philoso- pher, The Death of Pelegrinus, offers a contrasting image of the worst symptoms of contemporary philosophy. Pelegrinus is, in Lucian's portrait, a fraud through and through. His 'phi- losophy' is all show, no substance; he is interested in looking like a philosopher rather than being one. One early symptom of his faddish self-aggrandisment is that he falls in with the gullible Christians, who are used to believing all kinds of nonsense and readily accept Pelegrinus as their new cult leader, second in authority only to their founder. An advan- tage of his brief period as a Christian is that Pelegrinus gets thrown into prison and is able to pretend to be Socrates await- ing execution - but with the added bonus that he survives the ordeal. The culmination of this hypocritical life comes in Pelegrinus' attempt to stage a truly crowd-pulling philo- sophical death. He leaps on a pyre at the Olympic Games, in the manner of two other models of the philosophical death: Empedocles, the physicist who thought the world was com- posed of Strife and Love and died by jumping into Mount Etna; and Hercules, beloved by the Stoics, who built his own funeral pyre on the top of Mount Oeta while tormented by the poisoned cloak of Nessus.
The absurdity of Pelegrinus' death lies partly in the attempt to conflate the deaths of Heracles and Empedocles with the death of Socrates. Heracles dies in agony, suffering from fire and poison, which represent, in a common Stoic reading, the torments of the passions. Socrates, by contrast, dies without any pain at all. If death is a spectator sport, it is doubly absurd to try to die like Socrates - in philosophic calm. Lucian sneers at the attempt by a modern philosopher to achieve a death as easy as that of Socrates, but also to get the glory of an agonised death like that of Heracles.