A useful overview of the reception of Socrates throughout the western tradition is James Hulse's Socrates: Reputations of a Gadfly (New York, Lang, 1995). Also helpful is Mario Montuori's Socrates: Physiology of a Myth (first published in Italian, 1974; very poor English translation, published Amsterdam, J. C. Gieben, 1981).
introduction
The epigraph from this chapter comes from a letter by T. B. Macaulay, written from Calcutta to his friend Ellis, dated 29 May 1835. Macaulay responds favourably to Plato, but not to Socrates, and writes, 'I am now deep in Plato, and intend to go right through all his works. His genius is above praise. Even where he is most absurd, - as, for example, in the Cratylus, - he shows an acuteness, and an expanse of intel- lect, which is quite a phenomenon by itself. The character of Socrates does not rise upon me. The more I read about him, the less I wonder that they poisoned him. If he had treated me as he is said to have treated Protagoras, Hippias, and Gorgias, I could never have forgiven him.'
Nicander's Alexipharmaca is available in English transla- tion in Nicander: The Poems and Poetical Fragments, edited with translation and notes by A. S. F. Gow and A. F. Scholfield (New York, Arno Press, 1979). On the painful symptoms of water hemlock poisoning, see C. Gill, 'The Death of Socrates', Classical Quarterly, 23, 1973, pp. 225-8. Gill's account is cor- rected by Enid Bloch, 'Hemlock Poisoning and the Death of Socrates', in Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith's The Trial and Execution of Socrates: Sources and Controversies (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2002). On uses of hemlock versus other methods of state killing, see Capital Punishment in Ancient Athens, Irving Barkan (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1936).
1 socrates' philosophy
In general, the most ancient important sources used here are: Plato's Euthyphro, Apology, Crito and Phaedo, all available in The Last Days of Socrates, translated and edited by Hugh
Tredennick and Harold Tarrant (London, Penguin Books, 2003); Plato's Gorgias, translated by Chris Emlyn-Jones and Walter Hamilton (London, Penguin Books, 2004); and Plato's Protagoras and Meno, translated by Adam Beresford, with an introduction by Lesley Brown (London, Penguin Books, 2006). The contrast between water, which can be transferred from one cup to another on a piece of wool, and wisdom, which cannot be so easily transferred, comes from Plato's Symposium, translated by Christopher Gill (London, Penguin Books, 2003). The Symposium is also the most important source for Socrates' appearance and his relation- ship with Alcibiades, discussed in Chapter 2. Aristophanes' Clouds is available in many translations, including Lysistrata/ The Archarnians/The Clouds, translated by Alan Sommerstein (London, Penguin Books, 1974).
On Aristophanes' Clouds, see the introduction to the edition by K. Dover, which is mostly accessible to those who have no knowledge of Greek.
On Socrates' philosophy, see Thomas Brickhouse and Nicholas Smith's The Philosophy of Socrates (Boulder, Co., Westview Press, 2000) and Gregory Vlastos, Socrates: Ironist and Moral Philosopher (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1991). Vlastos' view of Socratic irony is challenged by many other Platonists, including Alexander Nehemas (Art of Living: Socratic Reflections from Plato to Foucault (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1988)) and Iakovos Vasiliou ('Conditional Irony in the Socratic Dialogues', Classical Quarterly, 49(2), 1988, pp. 456-72).
Robert Nozick discusses Socratic ignorance in Socratic Puzzles (Cambridge MA, Harvard University Press, 1997). Also see Socratic Questions: New Essays on the philosophy of Socrates and its significance edited by Barry S. Gower and
FURTHER READING 22 7
Michael Stokes (Routledge, London, 1992); Essays on the Philosophy of Socrates edited by Hugh H. Benson, Oxford University Press, 1992; and Remembering Socrates: Philosophical essays edited by Lindsay Judson and Vassilis Karasmanis (Clarendon, Oxford, 2006), which includes two essays on reception.
Mario Vegetti's essay, 'The Greeks and their gods', is in The Greeks edited by Jean-Pierre Vernant, translated by Charles Lambert and Teresa Lavender Fagan (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1995, pp. 254-84).
Leo Strauss's The City and the Man (Chicago, Chicago University Press, 1964) discusses Plato's Republic.
A lively recent account of Socratic philosophical method is Debra Nails's Agora, Academy, and the Conduct of Philosophy (Kluwer, Dordrecht and Boston, 1995). Charles Kahn's Plato and the Socratic Dialogue (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996) provides an energetic and controversial intro- duction. These books offer an introductory glimpse into the Socratic problem.
On the Athenian religious context for the trial, see Robert Garland, Introducing New Gods: The Politics of Athenian Religion (Ithaca, NY, Cornell University Press, 1992), and especially the magisterial overview in Robert Parker's Athenian Religion: A History (Oxford, Clarendon, 1996). On Socrates' own religious views, a good starting point for the scholarly debate are the articles collected in Brickhouse and Smith's The Trial and Execution of Socrates (see especially the articles by M. F. Burnyeat and Mark L. McPherran).
The money equivalences given in this chapter are based on Antiphon and Andocides translated by Michael Gargarin and Douglas M. MacDowell (University of Texas Press, Austin, 1998, pp. xxv-xxvi).
2 politics and society
Our main source for the Peloponnesian War is Thucydides (The History of the Peloponnesian War, translated by Rex Warner, Penguin, London, 1954).
A very useful book on all the characters who appear in Plato's dialogues is Debra Nails's The People of Plato (Indianopolis, Hackett, 2002).
For more on the historical Socrates, a good place to start is Brickhouse and Smith's The Trial and Execution of Socrates. This includes extracts from the ancient sources and a selec- tion of modern scholarly essays. It has a useful introduction by the editors that surveys the state of current opinion.
A good non-specialist introduction to the historical issues is given by James A. Colaiaco, Socrates against Athens: Philosophy on trial (Routledge, New York and London, 2001).
Douglas MacDowell's edition of Andocides' On the Mysteries (Oxford, Clarendon, 1989) contains a useful appen- dix on the events of 415 bc, which is comprehensible without Greek.
For more detailed discussion of the political context of the trial, see Mogens Herman Hansen, 'The Trial of Socrates from the Athenian Point of View', Historisk-Filosofiske Meddelelser, 71 ^994.
Andrea Nightingale offers an interesting account of the development of philosophy as a discipline in the fifth and fourth centuries bc, including discussion of why it matters that Socrates, unlike the other sophists, did not take money: see Genres in Dialogue (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1995). The Lysias passage discussed in this chapter is included in Lysias, translated by S. C. Todd (Austin, University of Texas Press, 2000).
On visual representations of Socrates and other philos- ophers of antiquity, see John Henderson, 'Seeing through Socrates: Portrait of the Philosopher in Sculpture Culture', Art History, 19, 1996, pp. 327-52; and Paul Zanker, The Mask of Socrates: The Image of the Intellectual in Antiquity, trans- lated by Alan Shapiro (Berkeley, University of California Press, 1995). On associations between Socrates and satyrs, see Daniel McLean, 'Refiguring Socrates: Comedy and Corporeality in the Socratic Tradition', unpublished PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2002.