Socrates' life and death were dominated by two oral activ- ities: talking and drinking. Monty Python's 'Philosopher's Drinking Song' is a hilarious celebration of the philosophical greats - Aristotle, John Stuart Mill and others - not for their thought, but for their capacity to down large quantities of alcohol.
Heidegger, Heidegger, was a boozy beggar
Who could think you under the table.
In most of the stanzas in the song, the idea of the boozing phi- losophers is funny because it is absurd: Nietzsche was more or less teetotal, and in the wine-drinking culture of ancient Greece, Plato would presumably not have had access to 'half a crate of whisky every day', even had he wanted it. But Socrates stands out in this group, a climactic figure who is mentioned emphatically both in the middle and in the end:
Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed,
A lovely little thinker,
But a bugger when he's pissed.
Socrates is different from all of the rest not merely because he was the first ethical philosopher in the western tradition, but also because he really is famous for drinking as well as for thinking.
Plato's Symposium or Drinking-Party presents Socrates as the heaviest drinker of all, but the one who is best at holding his liquor: he keeps talking cogently even when almost all his friends have gone to sleep. As Socrates' friend and admirer Alcibiades comments, 'The amazing thing is that nobody ever saw Socrates drunk'.
Hemlock, just like alcohol, seems hardly to affect him, however much he knocks it back. An epigram on Socrates' death by the ancient biographer Diogenes Laertius (third century ad) celebrates the hemlock as only the most literal of Socrates' many drinks:
Drink now, O Socrates, in the kingdom of Zeus. Rightly the god declared that you are wise, Apollo, who himself is perfect wisdom. You drank the poison which your city gave, But they drank wisdom from your god-like voice.
The poem suggests that there was an intimate connection between Socrates' oral philosophy - the 'wisdom' that he gave to the city - and the poison by which he died. The means of Socrates' death defined the meaning of his life.
On a mundane historical level, we might be tempted to say that the philosopher died by hemlock simply because he was a white-collar criminal who had some rich friends. In Athens in the late fifth century bc, the most common means of execution was so-called 'bloodless crucifixion'. (The term 'crucifixion' is used for any kind of death where the victim is strung by the arms to a post, tree or stake.) In bloodless crucifixion the prisoner was strapped down to a board with iron restraints round limbs and neck, and strangled to death as the collar was drawn gradually tighter. The advantages of this method were that no blood was spilt (and thus no blood-guilt was incurred), and it was much cheaper than hemlock, because the same materials could be recycled again and again.
Hemlock, a natural plant-based poison, had to be imported from Asia Minor or Crete; hemlock was not native to Attica. The prisoner or his friends may have had to pay for his own dose. Plato - whose family was rich - may have been the author of Socrates' death in more senses than one.
One obvious advantage of hemlock over other methods, including those popular in modern societies (such as hanging, beheading, knifing, stoning, shooting, the electric chair or lethal injection), is that it felt clean - even more so than bloodless crucifixion. Hemlock poisoning hardly looks like execution at all. The prisoner brings about his own death: he kills himself, but without committing suicide. This final paradox becomes an essential element in the myth of Socrates' death.
For most of us, death is something that comes upon us. We cannot predict the day or the hour when we will die. Socrates, by contrast, died in complete control, and his death fitted perfectly with his life. If Socrates had been crucified, then the whole later history of western philosophy and reli- gion might have looked very different.
Socrates was, we are told, delighted that he had the opportunity to die by hemlock. According to Xenophon, he cited at least three advantages to dying this way. 'If I am con- demned,' said Socrates, 'it is clear that I will get the chance to enjoy the death which has been judged easiest or least painful (by those whose job it is to consider these things); the death which causes the least trouble to one's family and friends; and the death which makes people feel most grief for the deceased.' Socrates avoided all of the indignity usually associated with death. He died at the peak of his powers. His friends did not have to see him convulsed or racked by ago- nising pain. They did not have to empty bedpans, mop up vomit or nurse a senile old man. He left only good memories behind him.
Socrates - surrounded by a group of friends - drank the poison in prison. Plato gives us a detailed and tear-jerking description of what happened as the hemlock took hold of him.
He walked about and, when he said his legs were heavy, lay down on his back, for such was the advice of the attendant. The man who had administered the poison laid his hands on him, and after a while examined his feet and legs, then pinched his foot hard and asked if he felt it. He said, 'No'; then after that, his thighs; and passing upwards in this way he showed us that he was growing cold and rigid. And again he touched him and said that when it reached his heart, he would be gone. The chill had now reached the region about the groin, and uncovering his face, which had been covered, he said - and these were his last words - 'Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius. Pay it, and do not forget.' Crito said,
1. Jacques-Louis David's Death of Socrates (1787) shows the philosopher dying in his sexy, six-pack prime, an Enlightenment hero of reason and revolution (see chapter 6). Through the archway we glimpse Xanthippe going away up the stairs, while Plato, as an old man, sits at the foot of the bed remembering the scene.
'It will be done. But see if you have anything else to say.' To this question, he made no reply, but after a little while he moved; the attendant uncovered him; his eyes were fixed. And when Crito saw it, Crito closed his mouth and
eyes.
This was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, who was, as we may say, of all those of his time whom we have known, the best and wisest and most just man.
The manner of Socrates' death fits perfectly with the life he has chosen to live. The numbness which overcomes him is
presented as a gradual liberation from bodily life. Socrates dies with all his faculties intact, talking all the while, in no particular physical discomfort. The body need not intrude on the final work of the soul as it prepares to depart. Although the friends are all finally reduced to tears, Socrates remains calm, his attention devoted to philosophy until almost the last minute of life. This is the image of the death of Socrates which has most deeply influenced later generations.
Several late-twentieth-century scholars argued that Plato's account of the death of Socrates cannot possibly be accurate. It seemed too good to be true. Hemlock poisoning, they claimed, produces drooling, profuse sweating, stomach pains, head- ache, vomiting, rapid heart rate, dry mouth, fits and convul- sions. A passage from an ancient didactic poem about poisons and their remedies (the Alexipharmaca of Nicander, from the second century bc), describes these horrible symptoms:
A terrible choking blocks
the lower throat and the narrow passage of the windpipe;
the extremities grow cold, and inside the limbs the arteries,
strong though they are, get contracted. For a while he gasps
like somebody swooning, and his spirit sees the land of the dead.