The Life of Socrates
Socrates, the starting point of the succession of four great men, each of whom is the teacher of the next (Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, and Alexander the Great) had a wife, Xanthippe, and three sons. Some sources report that Socrates, like his father, was trained as a stonecutter and that in his later years, he lived off of a modest inheritance from his father. Xenophon (after Plato, the other major source on Socrates) remarks on Socrates poverty, that everything that he owned, including his house was only worth 5 minae. However, despite his poverty, there have been persistent hints that he was related to Athenian aristocracy, which may have contributed to the general climate at his execution.
Socrates served as a hoplite, a heavily armed foot soldier, in battles that included Potidaea (432), Delium (424), and Amphibolis (422) and saved the life of Alcibiades (the ward of Pericles) near Spartolus in 430. His bravery and endurance in battle were conspicuous and his active military career seems to be over at age 47.
Socrates steered clear of political leadership, as he believed that it sullied the soul. There were, however, a few political episodes that were etched in the Athenian mind in the years before his trial. First, Socrates served on the council for his tribe Antiochis after the battle of Arginusae (406) and served as president for the trial of 6 of the 10 generals charged with not picking up the wounded or the dead along the way home after battle. Socrates encountered resistance when he opposed the trial of the generals en masse, and unsuccessfully pressed for individual trials. The generals were found guilty en masse and executed. Second, he was a member of the Three Thousand citizens who had been created by the oligarchs known as the Thirty (404-403), or Thirty Tyrants. He was a close friend and teacher of Critias, Plato’s second cousin and leader of the Thirty, as well as Plato’s uncle, Charmides, another member of the Thirty. However, he refused to arrest Leon of Salamis when ordered to do so by the Thirty during their reign of terror.
Socrates was regarded by the Athenians as one of the sophists (though he denied it), a group of philosophers, often itinerant, who became prominent in the mid-5th century and later. Aristophanes depicts Socrates in his Clouds (424) as a plausible caricature of a natural scientist and sophist who introduces new gods. Socrates becomes a symbol of the free-thinking that caused a crisis on all levels, in religion, morality, and politics. His rationalism was seen as undermining the traditional religion of the Greeks of his day. However, even beyond his intellectual teachings, his trial was probably motivated by his political teachings and political actions. Socrates was opposed to rule by lot, taught mainly aristocratic students, and throughout the 4th century, it was generally held that he was executed for being the teacher of Critias (an enemy of democracy) and Alcibiades (a traitor to Athens). By 399, the unstable political situation in Sparta enabled the Athenians to maintain their tenuous freedom and democracy. Ostracism is no longer practiced, and the general amnesty of (events that occurred before) 403 is being observed, so Anytus searches for fresh charges, and comes up with the vague indictment of impiety and immorality (corruption of the youth). Both Plato and Xenophon portray Socrates as being a man of deep piety who customarily observed the rites and sacrifices of the gods. Yet, Socrates was found guilty by the jury, sentenced to death, and refused help from friends offering to help him escape. He dies a martyr’s death for Western philosophy.
