Aristophanes
ARISTOPHANES IS THE OLDEST OF OUR sources for Socrates. A comic playwright, over his forty-year career he attacked everything from beetle-dung to apparently serious politics. These onslaughts earned him enemies: among them was Cleon, a hard-line demagogue who argued for the destruction of the entire male population of Mytilene in 427 BC and again at Scione in 423 BC. Cleon pursued Aristophanes in the courts, and in return was ridiculed repeatedly until his death at the Battle of Amphipolis in 422 BC. Aristophanes would continue making scabrous jibes at politicians at all levels, and mild satire of the Athenian people in general. Another target was Socrates himself, who was turned into a figure of fun in Clouds. Comic licence makes it hard to determine how serious this character assassination was: Plato suggests that Aristophanes helped fuel the public distrust of Socrates,1 yet Aristophanes also features as an amiable dinner-companion of Socrates in Plato’s Symposium, which is set after Clouds was first performed. Despite the violence of his satire, Aristophanes survived the deadly series of revolutions and politically motivated assassinations that characterised the final years of the Peloponnesian War in Athens.2
Aristophanes’ career started with The Banqueters in 427 BC. He composed at least forty plays of which only eleven survive – we know the names of seventeen. Clouds, in which Socrates figures prominently, was produced in 423 BC. Clouds was not successful, finishing in last place at the City Dionysia festival. The poet-playwright’s career continued until shortly before he died in 386 BC.
WORKS
Banqueters (427 BC); Babylonians (426); Acharnians (425); Knights (424); Clouds (423); Wasps (422); Peace (421); Amphiaraus (414); Birds (414); Lysistrata (411); Women at the Thesmophoria (411); a first Plutus (408); Frogs (405); Ecclesiazusae (391); a second Plutus(388); Cocalus and Aiolosikon (possible dates 387 BC and 386 BC3).
Xenophon
Xenophon’s life was spent in warfare. Born near the beginning of the Peloponnesian War, probably in Erchia, a rural deme of Athens,4 he would later write treatises on horsemanship from his estate near Olympia on the plains of the Peloponnese. Xenophon had probably served in the Athenian cavalry during the Peloponnesian War, and fought against the democratic insurgents in the Athenian civil war of 404/3 BC. After the democratic victory, Xenophon left Greece. He went to Anatolia to join the ‘Ten Thousand’, the Greek mercenary force supporting Cyrus the Younger’s attempt to usurp the Persian throne. Cyrus was killed at Cunaxa (near Babylon) in 401 BC, and the five Greek generals in command of the Ten Thousand were themselves murdered soon after; Xenophon’s star rose in their place, as he led the surviving Greeks on a dangerous and violent journey back to safety near Trapezus. It was during this period that Socrates was executed, and scholars are divided on how well the two men could have been acquainted.5 Xenophon continued as a mercenary, first in Thrace and then for the Spartans in Anatolia and mainland Greece. Exiled by Athens, but protected by the Spartans, he was set up on an estate at Skillus, where he wrote most of his works. After the Spartan defeat at Leuctra, Xenophon was expelled from his estate and, though now reconciled with Athens, lived out the rest of his years near Corinth. His son Gryllus was killed fighting in the Athenian cavalry close to Mantinea in 362 BC.
XENOPHON’S WORKS MENTIONING SOCRATES, IN POSSIBLE ORDER OF COMPOSITION
Apology (composed after 384 BC?); Memorabilia (commenced); Symposium (before 371?); Memorabilia (completed); Oeconomicus (completed after 362).
Socrates also features in Xenophon’s Hellenica (not completed before 359–355 BC), a history of Greek affairs from 411 to 362 BC.6
Plato
Plato was in his late twenties when Socrates was executed in 399 BC. He had probably known Socrates for all of his adult life.7 Born some time around 428–423 BC, perhaps in Athens, into an aristocratic Athenian family, Plato was descended from Solon, who tradition claimed had brought democracy to the city.8 Plato’s uncle Critias headed the Thirty Tyrants, the murderous pro-Spartan faction that briefly controlled Athens after the end of the Peloponnesian War. Plato himself had been born in 428, not long after this war started. Growing up in the Athenian district of Cotyllus, he probably followed the normal educational path of a young aristocratic boy in poetry, music and gymnastics. He was a champion wrestler, almost certainly later serving in the Athenian military, presumably in the cavalry.9 After Socrates’ death, Plato’s life was nomadic and eventful. He spent time in Megara, Egypt and southern Italy, associating with tyrants in Sicily and even being sold into (and immediately ransomed from) slavery on the island of Aegina in 388/7 BC. Shortly afterwards he seems to have established the Academy in Athens, one of the most significant intellectual institutions in the history of the world. There men such as Aristotle met; they were not taught as such, but engaged in the long conversations that characterise Plato’s written output, and which Plato considered the necessary foundation-stone of all philosophical progress. Plato died in 348/7 BC.
It is important to remember that both Plato and Xenophon composed their works convinced that Athenians were wrong to vote for the death of Socrates.
PLATO’S DIALOGUES
The works are divided into three fluid and still-controversial periods: (a) early, (b) middle, (c) late. Perhaps Lysis was written while Socrates was still alive.
(a) Hippias Minor; Ion; Crito; Euthyphro; Laches; Charmides; Lysis; Menexenus; Protagoras; Meno; Gorgias; Euthydemus
(b) Cratylus; Hippias Maior (both perhaps early); Phaedo; Symposium; Republic (perhaps Book 1 is early); Phaedrus (perhaps late)
(c) Parmenides; Theaetetus; Sophist; Politicus; Philebus; Timaeus; Critias; Laws; (falsely attributed), Plato Alcibiades 1.
THE LIST OF DIALOGUES BELOW IS IN POSSIBLE ORDER OF DRAMATIC DATE
450 – Parmenides; 433/2 – Protagoras; 431–404 – Republic, Gorgias; 429 – Charmides; 424 – Laches; 422 – Cratylus; 418–416 – Phaedrus; 416 – Symposium; 413 – Ion; 409 – Lysis; 407 – Euthydemus; 402 – Meno; winter 402/1 – Menexenus; spring 399 –Theaetetus; 399 –Euthyphro, Symposium (frame), Statesman; May–June 399 – Apology; June–July 399 – Crito, Phaedo