Pelegrinus cannot really live up to either type of philo- sophical death. He tries to put off the evil hour for as long as possible. What he wants is not to die well, but to be seen to die well. When the crowd starts to urge him to jump at once, he grows rather pale and sickly. When Pelegrinus finally does make his death leap, Lucian is revolted both by the spectacle itself and by its reception. The cynics stand sadly round the pyre, showing a certain amount of grief. Lucian asks them, 'Are you waiting for a painter to come and picture you as the companions of Socrates are portrayed beside him?' The spectators watch this death only in the hope of being watched themselves. Lucian mocks the self-aggrandising egotism, both of those who want to die like Socrates, and of those who want to participate in the scene.
PAIN AND REVELATION: THE DEATH OF SOCRATES AND THE DEATH OF JESUS
People have been noticing parallels and contrasts between the deaths of Socrates and Jesus since at least the second century ad. The poet Shelley was one of many people through the ages who have named Socrates 'the Jesus Christ of Greece'. Voltaire, more unusually, dubbed Jesus 'the Socrates of Palestine'.
The Italian humanist Marsilio Ficino (1433-99) made one of the most extensive comparisons between the two deaths. He comments that Socrates, like Jesus, turned the other cheek and forgave the enemies who had caused his death. Both Socrates and Jesus were mocked and humiliated. Like Jesus, Socrates submitted meekly to death. Jesus was betrayed for thirty pieces of silver; Socrates offered the price of thirty minae in court. Like the Jews after the death of Christ, the Athenians suffered divine retaliation after Socrates' death. Like Jesus, Socrates washed in the evening before his death and exhorted his disciples to piety at dinner-time. The sayings of Socrates were written down not by himself, but by his disciples. Ficino exclaims, 'What am I to say about the fact that, in the same hour [Socrates] refers to the cup, to the benediction, and in the very hour of his death, to the cock?' The resemblances seem to go far beyond coincidence. The dying Socrates, for Ficino, was as like as any human being could be to the dying Messiah.
But the death of Socrates was different from that of Jesus in two obvious ways: because Jesus died in agony (not calmly and painlessly) and because Socrates died without the benefit of Christian revelation. In the early centuries of Christianity and in the Renaissance, the comparison of Jesus with Socrates allowed writers, philosophers and theologians to think about the relationship of Christian faith to pagan wisdom, and about whether pain is a necessary element in an admirable, heroic death. The issue of pain was espe- cially important at the time of the early Christian martyr- doms, while in the Renaissance - as we will see in the second half of this chapter - knowledge, not pain, became the most important feature distinguishing the two deaths.
the two cups
The writers of the New Testament were often conscious of the example of Plato's Socrates. Luke's Gospel - the one that addresses itself most clearly to pagan readers - approxi- mates Jesus' death on the Cross as closely as possible to the supposedly painless death by hemlock. Luke puts much less emphasis than the other Gospel writers on the pain and humiliation suffered by Jesus at his execution.
After the Last Supper, Jesus goes to the garden of Gethsemane to pray. In Matthew and Mark, he is 'sorrowful and troubled': he says to his disciples, 'My soul is very sor- rowful, even to death; remain here, and watch with me.' In all three Synoptic Gospels, he speaks of his coming suffering and death as a 'cup': 'My father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt.' The 'cup' of suffering or of God's anger is a familiar motif from the Psalms and the Prophets, and recurs in Revelation. But a pagan reader might well make the comparison between Jesus' 'cup' and the hemlock cup of Socrates.
The danger, for a Christian author appealing to an audi- ence familiar with the death of Socrates, is that Jesus' desire to have his 'cup' pass from him may seem to compare unfa- vourably with Socrates' willingness to drink the hemlock. Luke is the only Gospel writer to confront this issue. He solves the problem by an angeclass="underline" after Jesus' prayer in Gethsemane, Luke tells us, 'there appeared an angel from heaven, strengthening him'. Jesus' internal conflict is fully resolved by the time he goes forward to execution.
Christian attempts to move beyond pagan models often involve subsuming what had once been pagan into Christianity. Paul declares in the first letter to the Corinthians:
Jews demand signs and Greeks seek wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and folly to Gentiles, but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. For the foolishness of God is wiser than men, and the weakness of God is stronger than men (1 Corinthians 1.22-25).
He may seem to be declaring the absolute novelty of the Christian revelation: through the Incarnation and Crucifixion, God has turned the values of the world on their head. The pain and humiliation of a man on a cross have become the new wisdom and the new strength. But the passage appro- priates the Socratic concept of a foolishness that is wiser than any supposedly human cleverness, and of a sharp distinc- tion between human and divine wisdom, found in Plato's Apology. This passage suggests that Jesus trumps Socrates because he manages to maintain a kind of Socratic irony right up to the end: his death, like his life, seems foolish and weak to the many; but to those with eyes to see, it is the supreme example of wisdom and strength.
a fight to the death
Early Christians often turned back to Socrates to find a pre- cedent for Jesus' humble teaching. A striking confirmation of this comes in the artistic tradition. Socrates was often pre- sented surrounded by six disciples or students. The group of seven echoed, iconographically, the ancient tradition of the Seven Sages, the seven wisest men in the world. Christian artists followed this pose, depicting Jesus with not twelve but six disciples - as if Jesus were simply a younger version of Socrates.
During the second and third centuries ad, debates about the new cult religion often discussed the relationship of Jesus to the old Greek philosophers, and especially to Socrates. Socrates was, if anyone could be, the Messiah of paganism. The death of Socrates, then, became an essential issue in the controversy about the relative merits of pagan and Christian morality. Jesus and the Christian martyrs competed with Socrates for the best death.
The death of Socrates also became a touchstone for those who hoped to find some way to incorporate elements of the pagan tradition into Christianity. Perhaps some particu- larly noble pagans - like Socrates - could set a good moral example, even for a Christian. Some thinkers in late antiquity tried to find a compromise position between paganism and Christianity, suggesting that it might be possible to admire both Jesus and Socrates.
Probably the first Christian to appeal explicitly to the example of Socrates was Justin Martyr (c. ad 100-165; he was roughly a contemporary of Lucian). By birth, Justin was a Greek gentile. He was well educated in Greek philoso- phy and especially loved Plato. When he was about thirty, he converted to Christianity. Justin ascribes his conversion partly to his Platonism: 'When I was a disciple of Plato,' he writes, 'hearing the accusations made against the Christians and seeing them intrepid in the face of death and of all that men fear, I said to myself that it was impossible that they should be living in evil and in the love of pleasure.' It was because the Christians behaved so much like Socrates in the Phaedo, in their courage against death, that Justin realised they must be virtuous people. The dying Socrates led Justin to the dying Christ.