The temptation to draw parallels between Athens and Europe became even stronger after the Second World War, which seemed to many to resemble the Peloponnesian War. If so, the death of Socrates began to look like a terrible fore- shadowing of the effects of fascism, Marxism or totalitarian- ism - in effect, a one-man Holocaust.
Perhaps the most compelling twentieth-century evoca- tion of Socrates' death written in the aftermath of the Second World War is Mary Renault's novel The Last of the Wine (1956). Renault evokes the whole history of Athens, from the time of the Great Plague (430 bc) until immediately before the trial. The book is told from the perspective of a fictional young man called Alexias, who stands on the edge of Socrates' circle and suffers through the turbulent final years of the Peloponnesian War and its aftermath.
With admirable restraint, Renault avoids describing the actual death of Socrates; Plato had done that already. Instead, his death is foreshadowed in the death of the narrator's young uncle, also called Alexias, at the very beginning of the story. When his boyfriend is dying of plague, Alexias goes to him and takes hemlock with him, 'so that they should make the journey together'. With the hemlock dregs, he writes the boyfriend's name, Philon ('Dear one'), 'as one does after supper with the last of the wine'.
Renault does not associate Socrates with any single strand of political opinion. For her, what is lost after his death is precisely a capacity for human love, loyalty and intellectual exploration, free from the restraints of politics. Socrates, like Alexias, will take the hemlock by his own choosing, for the sake of the dying things he loves: beauty, truth and the city of Athens. The world is less magical without him.
Most twentieth-century retellings that link the Pelopon- nesian and world wars do so in a less restrained way. Karl Popper argued in a book written during the Second World War (The Open Society and Its Enemies, 1945) that Plato was at the root of western totalitarianism - including both Marxism and fascism - while Socrates fought and died for the oppo- site of totalitarianism: 'the faith in man, in equalitarian justice, and in human reason': 'He showed that a man could die, not only for fate and fame and other grand things of this kind, but also for the freedom of critical thought, and for a self-respect which has nothing to do with self-importance or sentimentality.' Like many thinkers after the war, Popper believed that the world needed a return to Socrates, away from the terrible dangers of Platonism.
The American playwright Maxwell Anderson wrote a play about the death of Socrates in 1951, Barefoot in Athens, which provides a celebration of Socrates' death as a heroic symbol for modern democratic society. Anderson's version of the story sets it firmly in the context of the Cold War between America and the Soviet Union. Socrates' Athens is, like America, a democracy whose freedoms are under threat of a takeover by a communist power: Sparta. Anderson assumes that freedom of speech, to which Socrates devotes his life, is possible only under a democracy.
The dramatic climax of Anderson's play is the final moment in prison, when Pausanias, the King of Sparta, offers Socrates the opportunity to escape with his family to a Spartan palace. Socrates refuses, because he would be unable there to speak his own mind freely to people of every class and position. There is, he claims, no other city in the
Greek world where he can do this, because 'Athens is the only democracy'. Historically, all this is nonsense. But the point of the play is contemporary American ideology, not historical accuracy. Anderson presents the trial of Socrates as a symbol of democratic glory as well as democratic shame: only in a democratic system could such a trial take place.
The play shifts attention away from Socrates' relationship with his friends to his relationship with his wife and family. It tells the story of a final reconciliation between an old married couple. Socrates tells Xanthippe, 'Athens has been the great love of my life, and after Athens, you.' She is, understanda- bly, jealous: she wants her husband to love her enough to put food on the table. She also reminds Socrates that his love for his country is, necessarily, unrequited: 'No matter how much you love Athens it doesn't love you.' But the play presents love - and especially unrequited or not-quite-requited love - as the most beautiful state of being, which again is possible only in a democratic society. Socrates dies for love of Athens, while Xanthippe remains in Athens in order to continue her love for Socrates. The lights dim as Socrates and Xanthippe sit cuddled up together, praying in darkness for 'beauty in the inward soul'. Socrates has now become the hero of a new kind of enlightenment. He is a man who dies for love of per- sonal freedom, who does not know much about earning a buck, but knows for sure that love is all you need.
The last work of the great Italian film director Roberto Rossellini was a stiff but dignified television film of Socrates' last days (Socrate, 1970), which celebrates Socrates as an anti- totalitarian, a man who is always willing to question received prejudices. Rossellini's Socrates is a defender of the liberties of the modern city, which Rossellini had seen compromised in fascist Italy.
But for others, Socrates himself was on the side of the fascists. The journalist I. F. Stone wrote a popular and read- able book, The Trial of Socrates (1988), in which he returned to the old argument that the real charge against Socrates was hatred of democracy. Stone suggests that Socrates may even have engineered his own death in order to bring Athenian democracy into disrepute.
Stone's book was criticised by many reviewers and schol- ars, who noticed that it provides a view of history highly coloured by Stone's own radical politics. But the book was also extremely influential. It inspired a television play by the British playwright Peter Barnes (The Trial of Socrates, 1992). Barnes's Socrates is, like Stone's, an anti-democrat who resists any form of political participation. He deserves to die for his hatred of democracy. The greatest injustice is that it is he, not more deserving men, whose death will bring endless fame.
In the eighteenth century, as we have seen, figures like Voltaire and Moses Mendelssohn proposed a new vision of Socrates as a great teacher, friend, and philanthropist, a man whose life, death and example can improve life on earth for all mankind. Modern readers have often felt sceptical of this vision.
A comment from one of the greatest twentieth century admirers and scholars of Socrates, Gregory Vlastos, takes us back to the old comparison between Socrates and Jesus, and articulates why many modern readers feel that Socrates was ultimately less admirable, and even less likable. 'Jesus wept for Jerusalem. Socrates warns Athens, scolds it, exhorts it, condemns it. But he has no tears for it.' We come back to the age-old criticism of Socrates for not suffering enough pain, in comparison to Jesus' agony on the Cross. But the main concern has altered, from physical to emotional pain. Vlastos, like many twentieth century readers, is particularly upset by the fact that Socrates showed no grief for his companions or family - and therefore, showed no love. Socrates is now seen as a loner, not the centre of a community. Twentieth century readers assume that the life of the mind must be separate from the passion and tears of the heart.
metaphysics and common sense
Socrates has often been admired for his willingness to 'speak truth to power', and die in the telling. But it is unclear what truth, specifically, he told. The Romantic French poet Alphonse de Lamartine's influential and ecstatic La Mort de Socrate (published with the first collecction of Meditations Poetiques, 1820), presented Socrates as a mystical figure, who had glimpses of eternal life beyond our ken. Lamartine's Socrates gazes out over the sea, and rejoices to see the sail which brings his death. The contemplation of nature inspires in him a hysterically exclamatory happiness at God's benev- olence and at his own pure eternal soul. Death liberates him from the chains of life on earth, into new birth: 'Death is not death, my friends, but only change!'