c. 371 BC 2026
This is an AI modernization of The Memorabilia into contemporary English. The original is available from Project Gutenberg. Also available as an epub.
In 399 BC an Athenian jury convicted Socrates of refusing to recognize the gods of the city, of bringing in new divinities of his own, and of corrupting the young, and sentenced him to death. Xenophon, who had spent time with him as a young man, was not in Athens for the trial. He had gone east in 401 with a Greek mercenary army hired by a Persian prince, the prince had been killed, the generals had been murdered at a parley, and Xenophon had ended up leading ten thousand men home through hostile country — the march he wrote up afterwards as the Anabasis. He was an Athenian cavalryman turned soldier of fortune, later an exile living on an estate in the Peloponnese, and he wrote books about horsemanship, hunting, household management and Spartan government. This one, written around 371 BC, is his defense of his old teacher.
It opens by quoting the indictment and taking it apart clause by clause. Socrates sacrificed publicly and often; the divine sign he spoke of was nothing more exotic than what any Athenian claimed from omens; far from corrupting the young, he made them better at everything they tried. Once that is done, Xenophon spends the remaining three and a half books proving it the only way he can, by reporting conversation after conversation.
The reason to read it is the other portrait. Plato's dialogues are in this collection, and Plato's Socrates professes to know nothing, dismantles other men's definitions without supplying his own, and in the later dialogues is carrying Plato's philosophy. Xenophon's Socrates gives advice and expects it to be taken. He tells a shy, competent man that he owes the city his service and should go into politics, and tells a brilliant twenty-year-old that he is nowhere near ready. He talks a man whose household has filled up with refugee relatives into putting them to work. He patches up two quarreling brothers, discusses friendship with a courtesan named Theodote, and explains why a general needs the same skills as a good estate manager. Which of the two men is the real Socrates is an argument that has run for two thousand years without settling, and Xenophon was a soldier rather than a philosopher, which shows in what he found worth remembering.
Book Two has the best-known passage: the fable Prodicus told about the young Heracles meeting Virtue and Vice at a crossroads, each making her case for the life he should choose. John Adams proposed it as the design for the Great Seal of the United States.
This edition is the complete Memorabilia, all four books, modernized from H. G. Dakyns' English translation of 1897. Xenophon's other Socratic works — the Apology, the Symposium, the Oeconomicus — are separate books and are not included here.
I have often wondered what arguments the men who indicted Socrates could possibly have used to convince the Athenians that he deserved to die. The indictment ran like this: "Socrates is guilty of refusing to recognize the gods recognized by the state, of importing strange new divinities of his own, and of corrupting the young."
Start with the first charge. What evidence did they ever produce that Socrates refused to recognize the state's gods? Did he fail to sacrifice? Did he ignore divination? Just the opposite. He was regularly seen offering sacrifice, at home and at the public altars of the city, and he relied on divination just as openly. In fact his famous saying, "A divinity gives me a sign," was on everyone's lips — and if I had to guess, that phrase is exactly what gave rise to the charge of importing new divinities. But there was nothing newer in his case than in anyone else's who believes the gods send guidance. People everywhere rely on omens of every kind: the flight or cry of birds, a stray remark, a chance meeting, the entrails of a sacrificed animal. And even by the ordinary understanding, nobody thinks it's the bird itself, or the stranger you happen to pass, that knows what will benefit you — it's the gods who use these things as instruments to signal it. Socrates believed exactly that. The only difference was that where most people say a bird or a passerby "turned them back" or "urged them on," Socrates said what he actually meant: "The divinity," he said, "gives me a sign." He constantly advised his friends to do this or avoid that on the authority of that divine sign — and the plain fact is that those who took his advice did well, while those who ignored it lived to regret it. Now think about what that implies. Obviously he had no wish to look like a fraud or a fool in front of the people he saw every day. But he would have looked like both if he kept announcing revelations from a god and the god kept making him wrong. Clearly he would never have risked predicting anything unless he trusted that his words would come true. And where could that trust rest except on a god? And if he trusted the gods, how can anyone say he didn't recognize them?
There is another side to how he guided the people close to him. For the ordinary business of life, his advice was simple: act however you judge best. But where the outcome was genuinely beyond calculating, he told his friends to consult the oracle about whether to go ahead at all. "No one," he would say, "who wants to run a household or a city well — no one who hopes to steer the ship of state — can do without help from above." Of course, he granted, carpentry, building, metalwork, farming, the management of people, along with the theory behind these crafts and the sciences of arithmetic, economics, and strategy — all of that can be studied and mastered by the human mind. But even in these fields, he said, the gods keep the most important part for themselves, hidden from mortal eyes. A man can sow a field perfectly and still not know who will harvest the crop. He can build a beautiful house and not know who will live in it. A general cannot be sure a campaign will pay off; a politician cannot be sure his leadership will end in good or in disaster. A man who marries a lovely wife hoping for happiness cannot know whether she will bring him grief instead, and a man who builds powerful alliances in the city cannot know whether those very alliances will get him exiled. To imagine that all of this lies within human judgment, with nothing left to the gods, was, Socrates thought, madness. But it was just as absurd to run to Heaven with questions we are perfectly equipped to answer by learning — as if you should ask an oracle, "Should I hire an experienced driver for my carriage, or a man who has never held the reins?" or "Should I put a sailor in command of my ship, or a landsman?" The same goes for anything you can settle by counting, weighing, or measuring. Pestering the gods with questions like that struck him as a kind of profanity. "Our duty is plain," he would say. "Where the gods have given us the ability to work things out for ourselves, let's use it. But where the answer is hidden, let's seek it from above, through divination — for the gods give signs to anyone they favor."
Consider, too, that Socrates lived his whole life in plain view. Early in the morning he would head to the public walks or the training grounds; at midday he was in the marketplace with the crowds; and as the day wound down, wherever the biggest gathering was, that's where you would find him — talking, mostly, while anyone who wanted could stop and listen. And in all that time no one ever heard him say, or saw him do, a single impious or irreverent thing. Unlike others, in fact, he refused to speculate about the grand questions of the universe — how the "cosmos," as the professors call it, came into being, or what forces drive what happens in the heavens. Racking your brain over such things, he argued, was playing the fool. His first question was: did these theorists feel they had mastered human affairs so completely that they were free to move on to loftier matters? Or did they seriously believe that ignoring everything human to speculate about everything divine was the proper work of a man? He was amazed they couldn't see that these problems lie beyond mortal reach — since even the men proudest of their theories about them contradict one another like madmen. For just as some madmen have no fear of what is genuinely terrifying while others are terrified of what is harmless, and some will say or do anything in public without a flicker of shame while others won't set foot among their fellow men at all, and some honor neither temple nor altar nor anything else sacred while others bow down to sticks and stones and worship animals — so it goes with the thinkers who fret over the nature of the universe. One school has discovered that all being is one and indivisible; another, that it is infinite in number. One announces that everything is in constant flux; another answers that nothing can ever move at all. One says everything is born and everything dies; another counters that nothing could ever be born or ever die.
Sometimes his questioning of these speculators took a different tack. A student of human affairs, he pointed out, expects to put what he learns to use, for himself or for others as he chooses. So do these investigators of the divine machinery expect that, once they've discovered what forces produce the various phenomena, they will make wind and rain and good harvests on demand? Will they manage all that to suit their needs? Or has no such idea ever crossed their minds — will they be satisfied just to know how it all happens? That was how he talked about the people who meddle in such questions. He himself never tired of examining human ones. What is piety, and what is impiety? What is beautiful, and what is ugly? What is noble, and what is shameful? What do "just" and "unjust" mean? What is self-control, and what is madness? What is courage, and what is cowardice? What is a state, and what is a statesman? What is rule over men, and what makes a person fit to rule? These and questions like them were his subject — and understanding them, as he put it, is what makes a person truly free and noble, while those who don't understand them deserve to be called slaves.
Now, where Socrates' opinions were unknown to the public, it's no great surprise that the jury got him wrong. But that they ignored facts everyone knew — that is astonishing.
At one point Socrates served on the Council, and he had sworn the councilor's oath to act in accordance with the laws. It so happened that he was presiding over the Popular Assembly on the day it was seized by the urge to condemn the nine generals — Thrasyllus, Erasinides, and the rest — to death by a single collective vote, which was illegal. And despite the fury of the crowd and the threats of several powerful men, he refused to put the question to a vote. Keeping faith with his oath mattered more to him than gratifying the people in their injustice or shielding himself from the threats of the mighty. The truth is that his belief about how the gods watch over men was very different from most people's. The majority seem to imagine that the gods know some things and are ignorant of others. Socrates was convinced that the gods know everything — what is said, what is done, and what is deliberated in the silent chambers of the heart — that they are present everywhere, and that they give signs to men about everything that concerns men.
So I come back to where I began. It amazes me that the Athenians ever let themselves be persuaded that Socrates was anything but sound-minded about the gods. This was a man who never once said or did an impious thing regarding them — a man whose every word and every act concerning the gods matched, word for word and deed for deed, everything we recognize as the deepest piety.
Just as surprising to me is the belief that Socrates corrupted the young. Here was a man who, beyond everything I have already said, kept his appetites and passions under the strictest control; who could endure winter's cold, summer's heat, and every kind of hard work better than almost anyone; who had trained himself to need so little that even on the scantiest means he never lacked enough. Is it believable that such a man made others irreverent, or lawless, or self-indulgent, or soft in the face of hard work? Far from it. He was the saving of many, by kindling in them a passion for virtue and the hope that if they managed themselves carefully they could grow truly beautiful and good. Not that he ever set up as a teacher of virtue. But by being so visibly good himself, he made the people who spent time with him hope that by imitating him they might one day come to resemble him.
Nor should anyone conclude from this that he neglected his own body, or approved of those who neglected theirs. Stuffing yourself and then sweating it off with overwork was a regimen he condemned; the right plan, he thought, was to eat as much as the appetite genuinely welcomed and work it off with moderate exercise — a habit healthy for the body and no obstacle to the care of the soul. And there was nothing showy or affected about him: no dandyism of cloak or shoes, no soft living of any kind.
Least of all did he make his companions greedy for money. He curbed every other craving in them, and he refused to make a profit from the one craving they had for his company. By taking no payment, he believed, he was guarding his own freedom. People who charged fees for their conversation he branded as sellers of their own persons, since the fee obliges them to talk for the benefit of whoever pays. What amazed him was that anyone possessing virtue would demand money as its price, instead of counting the real profit — an honest friend gained — as reward enough. As if a soul newly awakened to honor could ever forget its debt to its greatest benefactor!
For his own part, without ever making any such promise, he was content to trust that those who took his teaching to heart would be good and true friends to him and to one another for life. How, then, would a man of this character corrupt the young? Unless the careful cultivation of virtue is corruption.
"But," says the accuser, "Socrates taught his companions to despise the established laws, by harping on the folly of appointing state officials by lot — a method no one would dream of using to choose a ship's pilot or a flute-player or anyone else in that line of work, where a mistake costs far less than a mistake in politics." Talk like this, the accuser claims, incited the young to hold the constitution in contempt and made them violent and headstrong. My own view is the opposite: people who train their minds, and who believe they can teach their fellow citizens where their true interests lie, are the last people to turn to violence. They know too well that violence breeds hatred and danger, while persuasion gets the same results safely and with goodwill. The man who is forced hates you, like a man who has been robbed of something precious; the man who is persuaded is grateful, as if you had done him a favor. Compulsion is not the method of the man who cultivates wisdom; it is the method of the man who holds power without judgment. And consider this too: a man who resorts to force needs plenty of allies to fight his battles; a man whose strength is persuasion needs no one, because he is confident he can win consent single-handed. What would such a man want with bloodshed? How absurd to kill a man rather than have him alive, willing, and useful.
"But," the accuser answers, "the two men who did the state more harm than anyone in its history — Critias and Alcibiades — were both companions of Socrates: Critias the oligarch and Alcibiades the democrat. Where will you find a greedier thief, a more savage killer, than the one? Where such a monument of insolence, self-indulgence, and high-handedness as the other?" For my part, insofar as those two harmed the state, I have no wish to appear as the defender of either. I will only explain what their connection with Socrates really was.
They were the two most ambitious men Athens ever produced. Ambition was in their blood: if they got their way, all power would be in their hands, and their fame would eclipse everyone else's. About Socrates they knew three things: first, that he lived a completely independent life on almost nothing; next, that he was disciplined to the last degree in the face of every pleasure; and last, that in debate he could do whatever he liked with any opponent. Given those facts, and given the character of the pair, which is more likely — that they sought his company because they were drawn to his way of life and his self-mastery, or because they calculated, "If we attach ourselves to him, we will become masters of statecraft, unmatched in speech and action"? My own belief is this: if heaven had offered them the choice between living out their whole lives as they saw Socrates living his, or dying, they would both have chosen death.
Their conduct is the proof. The moment they felt themselves the masters of everyone around them, they sprang away from Socrates and plunged into politics — the only prize for which they had ever sought his company in the first place.
Here someone may object: before giving his companions lessons in politics, Socrates should have taught them self-control. I do not dispute the principle. But I observe that every teacher shows his pupils, by example, how he practices what he preaches, and backs it up with argument. And I know that Socrates showed himself to his companions as a beautiful and noble character, and reasoned with them about virtue and every other human concern in the noblest way. I know, too, that even those two practiced self-control as long as they were with him — not from any fear that Socrates would fine them or beat them, but because at the time they were genuinely persuaded that such conduct was best.
Perhaps some self-styled philosophers will answer: "A truly just man can never become unjust; a self-controlled man can never lose control; nothing once learned can ever be unlearned." I do not agree. The soul works like the body. If the body goes without exercise, it can no longer do its work; if the soul goes without exercise, the same thing happens — we can no longer do what we should, or hold back from what we shouldn't. That is why fathers keep their sons away from bad men, however steady the sons may be: the company of the good is training in virtue, and the company of the bad is its undoing.
One poet testifies to this: "From the noble you will learn noble things; mix with the base, and you will lose even the sense you have." Another says: "The good man is base at one hour and noble at another." And I add my own testimony to theirs. I see that no one can remember a long poem without practice and repetition; in the same way, whoever stops rehearsing his teacher's words of instruction forgets them. And with the words of warning, a man forgets the very state of soul in which he once longed for goodness — and having forgotten that, is it any wonder he lets goodness itself slip away too? I see also that a man who slides into drunkenness, or plunges headlong into a love affair, loses his old power of doing right and refraining from wrong. Many a man who found thrift easy while passion was cold loses the knack the moment he falls in love; and once he has poured out his money, he no longer keeps his hands off gains he would once have been ashamed to touch. So where is the difficulty in supposing that a man can be self-controlled today and not tomorrow — that a man who once had the power to act rightly can lose it? To me, at any rate, it is clear that everything beautiful and noble is the fruit of constant practice and training, and self-control most of all. For the desires are planted in the same body as the soul, right alongside her, and they never stop whispering in her ear: "Drop this self-restraint. Hurry up and gratify us — gratify the body."
But back to Critias and Alcibiades. I repeat: as long as they lived with Socrates, they were able, with his support, to master their base appetites. Then they were separated from him. Critias fled to Thessaly, where he kept company with men better versed in lawlessness than in justice. Alcibiades fared no better. His beauty made him the quarry of fashionable women who hunted him as fair game, while his influence in the city and among the allies delivered him into the hands of expert flatterers. Honored by the democracy, stepping effortlessly to the front rank, he behaved like an athlete so sure of victory in the games that he lets his training slide — and so he forgot the duty he owed himself.
Such were the fortunes of these two. Is what followed really so strange? Puffed up by their ancestry, exalted by their wealth, inflated by power, worked on by a whole company of human tempters, and separated from Socrates for years on end — is it any wonder they grew arrogant through and through? And for the offenses of these two, the accuser holds Socrates responsible! Yet for the fact that in their early days, when they were young and at the age when recklessness and lack of restraint come most naturally, this same Socrates kept them modest and well behaved — for that, the accuser has not one word of praise. That is not how justice is measured anywhere else. What teacher of the harp or the flute, what teacher of anything, who has turned out competent pupils, is held to account because one of them goes off to another teacher and turns out a failure? What father, whose son stays honest in the company of one friend but goes to the bad in the company of another, blames the earlier friend? Doesn't he rather praise the first one all the more, the worse the boy turns out with the second? Fathers themselves, who share their own homes with their sons, are not blamed for their sons' offenses, so long as their own conduct is good. That is the fair test to apply to Socrates. Was he guilty of any base conduct himself? If so, call him a scoundrel. But if he never once faltered in self-control from beginning to end, how, in the name of justice, can he be blamed for a vice that was never in him?
I will go further. Even if he had done no wrong himself, but had watched others do wrong and approved, he would deserve blame. Listen, then. Socrates was well aware that Critias was in love with Euthydemus, and was trying to use him the way men do whose desire is for the body. He tried to talk him out of it, arguing that it was degrading, and unworthy of an honorable man, to appear as a beggar before the very person he loved and wanted to think well of him — forever pleading for something shameful to give and shameful to get.
When this reasoning fell on deaf ears and Critias refused to give it up, Socrates — so the story goes — remarked in front of a whole company, Euthydemus included, that Critias seemed to be suffering from a pig's itch: why else this urge to rub himself against Euthydemus, like piglets scraping against stones?
That, no doubt, is where Critias' hatred of Socrates began. He stored it up; and later, when he was one of the Thirty — the oligarchy that seized power in 404 — and sat with Charicles as the regime's official lawgiver, he remembered it. He wrote a law against teaching the art of words purely to injure Socrates. Having no other handle on him, he reached for the smear the public levels at philosophers in general, hoping to poison opinion against him — a charge quite unfounded in Socrates' case, so far as I ever heard from his own lips or learned about him from anyone else. But Critias' hatred soon showed itself plainly. At the time when the Thirty were putting citizens to death wholesale — respectable citizens — and pushing one man after another into crime, Socrates let fall a remark: "It would be strange enough for a herdsman who keeps thinning and starving his cattle to deny that he is a bad herdsman. But for a ruler of a city who keeps thinning and impoverishing the citizens to feel no shame, and deny that he is a bad ruler — that is stranger still." The remark was reported to the government. Critias and Charicles summoned Socrates, showed him the law, and forbade him to converse with the young.
Socrates asked whether he was permitted to put questions, in case anything in their commands was unclear to him.
"Certainly," the two of them said.
"Well then," said Socrates, "I am prepared to obey the laws. But to keep from breaking this one out of ignorance, I need instruction. Do you order us to keep away from the art of words because you think it makes speech correct, or because it makes speech incorrect? If correct, then apparently we must give up speaking correctly. If incorrect, then obviously we should be trying to mend our speech."
Charicles lost his temper. "Since you're so slow to understand, Socrates, we'll frame the order in language better suited to your intelligence: you are not to hold any conversation whatsoever with the young."
"Then to remove all ambiguity," said Socrates, "so there's no chance of my doing anything other than what you command — define for me up to what age a human being counts as young."
"For as long," Charicles answered, "as he is too young to sit on the Council — that is, before he has reached maturity of judgment. You will not converse with anyone under the age of thirty."
"And if I'm buying something," said Socrates, "and the seller happens to be under thirty, am I not even to ask what he's charging?"
"Oh, things of that sort, fine," said Charicles. "But you know perfectly well, Socrates, that you have a way of asking questions when you already know exactly how matters stand. None of that."
"And no answers either, I suppose," he said, "if some young man asks me something I happen to know — where Charicles lives, say, or where Critias is to be found?"
"Things of that kind, yes, of course," Charicles replied; and Critias put in: "But you'll have to be done with your shoemakers and carpenters and blacksmiths, Socrates. They must be worn quite down at the heel by now, the circulation you've given them."
"Then I must also give up what goes along with them," said Socrates, "— the just, the holy, and the rest?"
"Most assuredly," answered Charicles, "and cowherds in particular. Otherwise, take care you don't thin the herd yourself."
And there the secret was out. The remark about the cattle had reached their ears, and they could not forgive the man who made it.
That, perhaps, is enough to show what kind of intimacy existed between Critias and Socrates, and how they stood toward each other. But I will add this: no one gets an education from a teacher he does not like. And it cannot be said that Critias and Alcibiades kept Socrates' company because they liked him. From the very first, their eyes were fixed on one goal: leadership of the state. Even while they were with him, there were no debating partners they were more eager to take on than the leading politicians.
So there is a story told of Alcibiades — how, before he was twenty, he engaged his own guardian Pericles, then the first man of the state, in a discussion about laws.
"Tell me, Pericles," he said, "can you teach me what a law is?"
"Certainly I can," Pericles replied.
"Then please do. One so often hears men praised as 'law-abiding,' and it strikes me that nobody really earns that compliment who doesn't know what a law is."
"There's a ready answer to that, Alcibiades. You want to know what a law is? Laws are what the majority, meeting in assembly, approves and enacts, declaring what ought to be done and what ought not to be done."
"Enacts on the assumption that one ought to do what is good, or what is bad?"
"What is good, of course, young man — not what is bad."
"And if it is not the majority but a minority — as in an oligarchy — that meets and enacts rules of conduct, what are those?"
"Whatever the ruling power of the state, after deliberation, enacts as what must be done — that too is called law."
"Then if a tyrant, holding supreme power in the state, enacts rules of conduct for the citizens, are those enactments law?"
"Yes," said Pericles. "Whatever a tyrant enacts as head of the state — that also goes by the name of law."
"But force, Pericles, and lawlessness — how do we define those? Isn't it when the stronger compels the weaker to do what he pleases — not by persuasion, but by force?"
"So I would say," said Pericles.
"Then whatever a tyrant compels the citizens to do by decree, without persuading them — that is lawlessness?"
"You're right," said Pericles. "I take back what I said: measures a tyrant passes without persuading the citizens are not law."
"And measures a minority passes, not by persuading the majority but by the strength of its position — should we call that force, or not?"
"Anything one man compels another to do without persuasion," said Pericles, "whether he writes it into a decree or not, seems to me force rather than law."
"Then whatever the whole people, being stronger than the men of property, enacts without persuading them — that too would be force rather than law?"
"No doubt," answered Pericles — and he added: "At your age, Alcibiades, we were clever hands at this sort of thing ourselves. These are just the quibbles we used to sharpen our wits on — much as you're doing now, if I'm not mistaken."
To which Alcibiades replied, "Ah, Pericles — if only I could have known you when you were at your cleverest!"
Well then: as soon as they thought themselves superior to the politicians of the day, Critias and Alcibiades stopped coming to Socrates. His company held no attraction for them — and besides, when they did come, there was the annoyance of being cross-examined about their own shortcomings. Off they went to the affairs of state, the only reason they had ever come near him at all.
No — if you want to see Socrates' true companions, look at Crito, Chaerephon, Chaerecrates, Hermogenes, Simmias and Cebes, Phaedondes and the rest. They clung to him not to become star speakers in the Popular Assembly or the law courts, but with a nobler ambition: to become beautiful and good in soul, and so able to do their duty by household and family, by relatives and friends, by fellow citizens and the state at large. And of all these true followers, not one, in youth or in old age, ever did an evil deed — or was even accused of one.
"But for all that," the accuser insists, "Socrates taught sons to treat their fathers with contempt. He persuaded his young followers that he could make them wiser than their fathers, and he pointed out that the law allows a son to have his father confined if he proves him insane — evidence, he claimed, that it is lawful for the wiser to imprison the more ignorant."
What Socrates actually held was this: a man who imprisons another for nothing worse than ignorance could justly be imprisoned in his turn by those who know more than he does. Questions of that kind occupied him constantly — for instance, where exactly the line falls between madness and ignorance. His conclusion came to this: if a madman may be confined, as a practical matter, for his own good and his friends', then in all justice the man who does not know what he ought to know should be content to sit at the feet of those who do know, and learn.
"But it wasn't only fathers," the accuser goes on. "Socrates dishonored the rest of a man's kin in the eyes of his followers, saying that the sick man and the man with a lawsuit get no help from their relatives — one goes to his doctor, the other to his legal adviser. And listen to his language about friends: 'What good is their kindly feeling unless they can actually be of use to you? Good intentions by themselves are nothing; the only people worth honoring are those who know what is right and can explain it.' So by bringing the young to see him as supremely wise, and supremely gifted at making others wise, he so worked on his followers that in their eyes the rest of the world counted for nothing next to Socrates."
Now, I admit he said those things about fathers and the rest of a man's relatives. I can go further and add more. He said that when the soul — the only seat of intelligence in us — has gone out of a man, we carry out the body of even our nearest and dearest and bury it out of sight as fast as we can. He used to say that even in life, every man is ready to part with pieces of his own body — his dearest possession — wherever they are useless and unprofitable: he removes them himself, or lets someone else do it for him. Men cut their own nails and hair and corns; they let surgeons cut them and cauterize them, with pain and aching, and are so grateful for the service that they pay the surgeon a fee besides. And a man spits his saliva as far from him as he can, because inside the body it does him no good and some harm.
But in saying all this, his object was not to teach anyone to bury his father alive or carve himself to pieces. His point was that whatever lacks intelligence lacks worth; and so he urged his hearers to make themselves as sensible and as useful as they could — so that a man who wanted the esteem of a father, a brother, or anyone else would not sit back in careless self-satisfaction, trusting to mere kinship, but would work at being useful to the people whose esteem he wanted.
"But," the accuser continues, "Socrates carefully culled the most immoral passages from the famous poets and used them as evidence, teaching his companions to be criminals and tyrants." The line of Hesiod, for instance — "Work is no disgrace; it is idleness that is the disgrace" — the accuser says Socrates interpreted as the poet's command to shrink from no work, however wicked or shameful, but to do anything for gain.
Now, Socrates would have agreed entirely that it is a blessing and a benefit for a man to be a worker, and that a lazy do-nothing is a curse — that work is good and idleness an evil. But whom did he mean by workers? In his vocabulary, only those doing good work counted as workers at all. Dice-players, gamblers, and everyone else in a base and ruinous trade he called idle drones. Take it that way, and the line from Hesiod stands beyond reproach: "Work is no disgrace; only idleness is disgrace."
Then there was a passage from Homer that, the accuser tells us, was forever on his lips — the one about Odysseus during the rout: whenever he came upon a prince or a man of note, he would stand beside him and restrain him with gentle words — "Good sir, it isn't right for you to run like a coward. Stand fast yourself, and steady the rest of the men" — but any commoner he found shouting and breaking ranks, he struck with his staff and rebuked: "Sit still, wretch, and listen to your betters. You are weak and unwarlike, worth nothing in council or in war. We cannot all be kings here."
The accuser claims Socrates read these lines as the poet's approval for beating commoners and the poor. Socrates never said anything of the kind — by that reading, he would have been voting to have himself beaten. What he did say was that people who are useless in word and deed alike — incapable of helping the army or the city or the people itself in time of need — ought to be restrained, however rich they may be, and especially if they add insolence to their uselessness.
Socrates himself was the very opposite of all that. He was plainly a lover of the people — indeed, of all mankind. Though he had many devoted admirers, citizens and foreigners alike, he never charged anyone a fee for his company, but gave freely to all from the riches of his soul. Some of his hearers took the fragments they had received from him for nothing and sold them at high prices to everyone else; and they were no lovers of the people as he was, for they refused to talk with anyone who could not pay. In the eyes of the whole world, Socrates brought his city more honor and richer luster than Lichas, whose name is a byword, ever brought Sparta. Lichas made himself famous by feasting and entertaining the foreign visitors at the Gymnopaediae, Sparta's great festival; Socrates spent a lifetime pouring out his substance in the greatest of benefits, given to everyone who cared to receive them. He made those who kept his company better people, and sent them on their way rejoicing.
I can come to no other conclusion, then, but this: being so good a man, Socrates deserved honor from the state rather than death. And that, I would argue, is the strictly legal view of the case. What does the law demand? If a man is proved a thief, a clothes-stealer, a pickpocket, a housebreaker, a kidnapper, a robber of temples, the penalty is death. And of all men, no one stood further from those crimes than Socrates.
To the state he was never the cause of any harm — no disaster in war, no civil strife, no treason, no mischief of any kind. And his private life was as blameless as his public one. He never hurt a single soul, never deprived anyone of any good or inflicted any evil, and no one ever so much as accused him of doing so. Where, then, is his liability under the indictment? Far from refusing to recognize the gods, as the indictment claimed, he was conspicuous above all men for his service to heaven. Far from corrupting the young — the charge the prosecutor pressed hardest — he was known for laboring to free his companions from base desires, and to kindle in them a passion for that loveliest and most queenly of virtues, the one without which states and families crumble. Conducting himself so, did he not deserve high honor from Athens?
I have said that Socrates helped the people around him partly by the example he set and partly by what he said. To back that up, let me write down what I remember, beginning with religion and everything that concerns the gods.
In word and deed alike, he followed the rule the Pythia, Apollo's priestess at Delphi, gives to anyone who asks how to handle a sacrifice, or honoring ancestors, or anything of that kind. Her answer is: "Follow the law and custom of your own city, and you will be acting piously." That is how Socrates behaved, and that is what he urged others to do; people who acted on any other principle he considered fussy and full of themselves.
His prayer was simple: "Give me what is best for me." The gods, he said, know best what the good things actually are. Praying for gold or silver or absolute power made no more sense than praying for a particular throw of the dice, or a particular turn in a battle — things whose consequences no one can foresee.
His means were small, and so were his sacrifices, but he never felt this put him a step below people who offered great quantities from great wealth. It would be a sorry thing for the gods themselves, he thought, if they took more delight in big offerings than in small ones — for then the gifts of bad men would often please them more than the gifts of good men. And from our side, life would hardly be worth living if Heaven welcomed a villain's offering over a righteous man's. No: he believed the gods' joy is measured by the holiness of the giver. He was always quoting the line of Hesiod that says,
According to your ability, sacrifice to the immortal gods.
"Yes," he would say, "and in our dealings with friends and strangers, and in everything life demands of us, there's no better motto than that: let a man do according to his ability."
Or take another point. If he believed a sign had been given him from heaven, nothing on earth could make him go against it. You could sooner have talked him into taking a blind man who didn't know the road as his guide, in place of a sighted man who did. He said the same about others: it is folly to act against the warnings of God just to dodge some embarrassment in front of men. He himself held every human aid cheap next to counsel from above.
The way of life he trained his soul and body to was one that would let almost anyone who adopted it face existence cheerfully and pass his days in peace — and it certainly cost nothing to speak of. It was so frugal that I doubt any man could work so little as not to earn what contented Socrates. He ate just enough for eating to be a pleasure, and he came to the table with the only sauce he needed — an appetite. Any drink tasted good to him, because he never drank unless he was thirsty. If he accepted a dinner invitation, he had no trouble avoiding the trap most people fall into, of eating too much; and his advice for those who couldn't manage it was to stay away from anything that tempts you to eat when you're not hungry or drink when you're not thirsty. That sort of thing, he said, ruins your stomach, your head, and your soul. "It must have been by feasting men on so many fancy dishes," he liked to say, half joking, "that Circe turned them into pigs. Odysseus kept his self-control — that, and a timely warning from Hermes — and didn't gorge on them, and so he never turned into a swine." That was his way with the subject: light, and dead serious.
As for the affairs of Aphrodite, his advice was to stay well clear of beautiful people: touch that fire once, and it is not easy to keep a sound head and a sober mind. Take one case in particular. He had heard that Critobulus had kissed a good-looking boy — the son of Alcibiades. So with Critobulus standing right there, Socrates put a question to me.
"Tell me, Xenophon," he said, "haven't you always taken Critobulus for a sensible man rather than a rash one — prudent, not thoughtless or reckless?"
"Certainly," I said, "that's what I'd have said of him."
"Well, from now on consider him the opposite — a hot-headed daredevil. This is the kind of man who would turn somersaults over drawn knives, or jump into a fire."
"And what have you seen him do," I asked, "that you give him such a reputation?"
"Do? Hasn't the man dared to kiss the son of Alcibiades — the best-looking boy in his prime?"
"Well," I said, "if that's the daredevil stunt in question, I think I could face that danger myself."
"You poor soul," he said. "And what do you think happens to you after that kiss? Let me tell you. That instant, you lose your freedom — the papers of your slavery are as good as signed. You'll be forced to spend a fortune on pleasures that hurt you. You'll have hardly a free moment for anything worth studying. You'll find yourself chasing, with all your energy, things no man would choose to chase — not even a madman."
"Heracles!" I said. "What a terrible power to live in one kiss!"
"Does that surprise you?" he said. "Don't you know the tarantula, no bigger than a small coin, has only to touch your mouth and it racks its victim with pain and drives him out of his mind?"
"Yes," I said, "but the tarantula injects something when it bites."
"You fool — and you think these beautiful creatures inject nothing with a kiss, just because you can't see the poison? Don't you know that this wild beast people call 'beauty in its bloom' is deadlier than any tarantula? The spider at least has to touch you. This thing needs no contact at all — let a man merely look at it, even from far off, and it injects something into him that drives him mad. Maybe that's why the Loves are called 'archers': because beauty wounds from a distance. My advice to you, Xenophon, is that whenever you catch sight of one of these beautiful faces, you run for your life and don't look back. And to you, Critobulus: go abroad for a year. Even that may barely be long enough for the wound to heal."
That, he said, is how anyone on unsteady footing should handle the affairs of Aphrodite, just as with food and drink: keep to what the soul could do without entirely, if the body didn't require it — and even then, nothing that stirs up trouble. But he himself, plainly, was armed at every point and could not be touched. He found it easier to keep away from beauty in its fullest bloom than most men find it to refuse weeds and garbage. To sum up: in eating and drinking and all these temptations of the senses, the equipment of his soul made him independent. He could honestly claim that his modest pleasures were no smaller than the pleasures of people who work so hard to get theirs — and his pains were far fewer.
There is a view in circulation, based on what certain people say and write about Socrates — guesswork in both cases — that however good he was at firing men up about virtue in theory, he was incapable of actually leading them to it. Those who hold this view should weigh carefully not just the way he used cross-examination to take down people who imagined they knew everything, but also his everyday conversation with the friends who spent their time in his company. Then let them decide whether he was incapable of making his companions better.
I will start with a conversation I once heard him have about divinity with Aristodemus, "the little," as he was called. Socrates had noticed that Aristodemus neither sacrificed to the gods nor paid any attention to divination — in fact, he made fun of people who did.
"Tell me, Aristodemus," he began, "are there any human beings you admire for their genius?"
"There are," he said.
"Give us their names."
"In epic poetry, the one I admire most is Homer. In dithyrambs — choral hymns — Melanippides. Sophocles in tragedy, Polyclitus in sculpture, Zeuxis in painting."
"And which do you consider more admirable: someone who fashions senseless images that cannot move, or someone who could fashion living creatures with minds and motion of their own?"
"The latter, by far — provided the living creatures came about by design and weren't just an accident."
"Now suppose you had two kinds of things: one gives no clue what it's for, and the other obviously serves some useful purpose. Which would you judge the work of chance, and which of design?"
"Clearly the one made for a useful end is the work of design."
"Then doesn't it strike you that whoever made human beings in the first place gave them each of their senses for a useful end? Eyes to see the visible world, ears to catch sound. What good would smells be if we hadn't been given nostrils? What sense of sweet and sharp and every pleasure of the palate, if a tongue hadn't been fashioned in us to report on them? And beyond that — doesn't this look like foresight: that the delicate eyeball is shuttered with eyelids like folding doors, which open wide when we need to see and close firmly in sleep? That eyelashes are planted as a screen, so even the wind can't strike the eye too roughly? That the brow above is finished with a ledge of eyebrow, so sweat running off the head can't get in and do damage? That the ear catches every sound and never fills up? That the front teeth of every animal are made for cutting, and the back ones for taking the food and grinding it down? That the mouth, the intake gate for everything the creature needs, is set close to the eyes and nose — while the exits for waste, which is unpleasant, are turned away behind and routed as far as possible from the senses? When you see all this built with such evident foresight, can you really be in doubt whether it's the product of chance or of intelligence?"
"No — put that way, certainly not. It looks like the handiwork of some wise craftsman who loves living things."
"And what about the passion planted in man to beget children, and in the mother to rear her baby, and in the creature itself, once born, this deep desire to live and this fear of death?"
"No doubt those look like the contrivances of someone who deliberately planned for living creatures to exist."
"And you — you'd say you have a spark of wisdom in you yourself?"
"Ask your questions and I'll answer."
"And yet you imagine wisdom exists nowhere else? You know your body holds only a tiny fragment of the vast earth, a little drop of all the waters, a small portion of each of the other elements, huge as they are, that went into assembling your frame. Mind alone, apparently — which is found nowhere — you had the luck to snatch up out of nothing, you can't say how. And these things around us, enormous in size and countless in number, keep their perfect order, you suppose, through some absence of intelligence?"
"Maybe so — because I can't see the master agents behind them, the way I can see the makers of things produced here on earth."
"You can't see your own soul either, and it is the master agent of your body. By that logic you're entitled to say you do nothing by intelligence, and everything by chance."
At this point Aristodemus said, "I assure you, Socrates, I don't look down on the divine power. On the contrary — I believe the Divinity is too grand to need any service of mine."
"Then the grander the power that condescends to attend to you, the more you owe it honor."
"Believe me," he said, "if I could believe the gods take any thought for human beings, I would not neglect them."
"How can you suppose they don't? Who, in the first place, gave man alone among the animals his upright posture — letting him see farther ahead, gaze more freely at what is above, and come to less harm than the creatures that share his eyes and ears and mouth? Consider next: to the beasts of the field they gave feet, good only for getting around, but to man they gave hands as well — the hands that have done more than anything to lift us above the animals in happiness. And the tongue: every animal has one, but in man they fashioned it to touch different parts of the mouth at different moments, so that we can produce articulate speech and signal everything we want to one another. Or consider the pleasures of sex: in the rest of the animal kingdom, confined to fixed seasons; in man, continuing unbroken into old age. And it did not content the Godhead merely to look after man's body. Far more important, he planted in man the noblest and most excellent kind of soul. What other creature has a soul that can even recognize the existence of the gods who arranged this grand and beautiful universe? What other tribe of animals serves the gods at all? What spirit is better than man's at guarding against hunger and thirst, cold and heat, at relieving sickness and building strength? What is better suited to hard work for the sake of learning, or more capable of storing away in memory everything it has heard or seen or understood? Isn't it perfectly obvious to you that, beside the other animals, human beings live like gods — supreme by nature in body and soul alike? A creature with a man's mind in an ox's body couldn't carry out any of its intentions; and hands attached to a witless brute are useless. You have received both of these priceless gifts — and your considered opinion is that the gods take no thought for you? What exactly do you want them to do before you'll believe you are in their thoughts?"
"When they treat me the way you say they treat you," said Aristodemus, "and send me counselors to tell me what to do and what to avoid — then I'll believe."
"Send you counselors! And when the people of Athens consult the oracle and the gods answer — you're an Athenian, aren't you? Don't you think the answer is addressed to you too? When they send portents to warn the cities of Greece, or all mankind — you're a man, a Greek. Aren't those meant for you as well? Or are you the one person singled out for divine neglect? Again: do you suppose the gods could have planted in human hearts the belief that they have power to do us good or harm, if they had no such power? Wouldn't men have found out the fraud in all this time? Don't you see that the wisest and longest-lasting of human institutions — cities and whole peoples — are always the most god-fearing, and that in the individual, the riper the age and judgment, the deeper the religion? My good man," he went on, "take this to heart. Your own mind, inside you, turns and directs your body as it pleases; in the same way you ought to believe that the wisdom dwelling in the whole universe disposes of all things as it sees fit. Your eye can range over many miles — is the eye of God powerless to take in everything at a glance? Your soul can dwell in thought on affairs here, or in Egypt, or in Sicily — is the thought of God not sufficient to care for everything at once? With human beings, you learn who is willing to return your kindness by doing them acts of service; you get at the secret of a man's wisdom by asking his advice. Try the gods the same way: serve them, and see whether they will counsel you in matters hidden from mortal sight. You will discover that the Godhead is of such nature and such greatness as to see all things and hear all things at once, to be present everywhere, and to let nothing escape its watchful care."
To my mind, talk like this made his companions hold back from anything unholy, shameful, or unjust — not only when other men could see them, but even when they were alone, since they had to believe that nothing they did could escape the eye of Heaven.
I suppose everyone will grant that self-control is a noble thing for a man to possess. If so, consider whether talk like the following was likely to lead his listeners toward it. "Gentlemen," he would say, "if a war broke out and we wanted to choose the man best able to save us and defeat the enemy, would we pick someone we knew to be a slave to his belly, to wine, to lust — a man who folds at the first hardship or nods off on watch? Could we expect a man like that to save us, or to beat anybody? Or suppose a man near the end of his life wanted to find someone to educate his sons, guard his unmarried daughters, and keep his property safe — would he consider a man without self-control fit for any of those trusts? Why, no one would put his flocks and herds, his storehouses and barns, or the oversight of his work in the hands of a slave with no self-control. If someone offered us a steward or an errand boy of that character as a free gift, we'd turn him down. And if a man won't accept a slave without self-control, how hard should the master work to avoid deserving the same label himself? It's not with the intemperate as with the greedy and the grasping. Those men, whatever they take from others, can at least be said to enrich themselves. But the man with no self-control can't claim to be a blessing to himself while he's a curse to his neighbors. The harm he does others is nothing next to the harm that falls back on himself — for the height of harm is to ruin not just your own house and property but your own body and your own soul. And in company: who enjoys a guest who obviously cares more for the wine and the food than for the friends beside him — who shortchanges his comrades of their due affection to fawn over a mistress? Doesn't it come down to this: every honest man should treat self-control as the very cornerstone of virtue, and lay it first as the foundation of his soul? Without it, who can learn anything good or practice it to any degree worth mentioning? What slave of pleasure won't end up degraded in body and soul together? By Hera, every free man should pray to be spared having such a slave — and every man enslaved to such pleasures should beg Heaven to send him good masters, because that is the one hope of rescue left to him."
Well-tempered words — but his self-control showed even more in his actions than in his talk. He was master not only of the pleasures of the body but of those that money feeds, too. His belief was that a man who takes money from any chance donor sets up a master over himself, and binds himself to a slavery as degrading as any there is.
Some conversations Socrates had with Antiphon the sophist also deserve a place in this record. Antiphon was hoping to lure Socrates' companions away from him, and he came up to Socrates once in their presence with this challenge: "Socrates, I always assumed that people who study philosophy were supposed to grow happier by the day. But you seem to have harvested a very different crop from yours. You live — no, exist — in a style no slave would put up with from his master. Your food and drink are the cheapest to be had. The one shabby cloak you own serves you summer and winter alike, and you go the whole year round without shoes on your feet or a shirt on your back. Then again, you won't take money or earn it — though the mere pursuit of money is a pleasure, and having it makes life sweeter and more independent. Now, teachers in every field generally try to shape their pupils into copies of themselves. If that's what you intend for your companions, you ought to call yourself a professor of misery."
To this challenge Socrates replied: "One thing is clear to me, Antiphon: you've painted such a vivid picture of my miserable life that I'm sure you would sooner die than live it. So let's look at what you actually find so hard about it. Is it that a man who takes payment is bound by contract to finish the work he's paid for, while I, who take nothing, am under no obligation to talk with anyone I don't choose? Do you look down on my diet because what I eat is less wholesome or less strengthening than what you eat — or because my food is scarcer and more expensive to come by? Or does what your money buys at the market simply taste better than what mine doesn't? Don't you know that the sharper your appetite, the less you need sauces, and the keener your thirst, the less you crave exotic drinks? As for clothes — people change them on account of cold or heat, and wear boots and shoes only so their feet won't blister and keep them from walking. Well, then: have you ever known me to stay indoors more than the next man because of the cold? Have you ever seen me fighting anyone for a spot in the shade because of the heat? Don't you know that even a naturally weak man can, by exercise and practice, come to outdo a natural giant who neglects his body — beat him at the very thing he's trained in, and bear the strain more easily? Yet apparently you won't accept that I, who am forever training myself to endure whatever may land on the body, can face every hardship more easily than someone like you, who perhaps hasn't practiced. And if it's a question of escaping slavery to the belly, or to sleep, or to lust — can you suggest any better protection than having something you love more: a counter-charm that delights you not only while you're using it, but with the hope of all the good it will keep on doing you? And this much you certainly do know: joy doesn't come to the man who feels he's succeeding at nothing. It belongs to the man who's convinced things are moving forward for him — in his farming, in the working of his ship, in any of the thousand and one jobs a man may turn his hand to. He gets to look at his work and think, 'I am doing well.' But is all that pleasure put together half as sweet as the consciousness of becoming a better person yourself, and of gaining better and better friends? That, for my part, is what I go on believing.
"Now suppose your friends or your country need help. Which of us has more free time to give them — the man who lives the way I live today, or the man who lives in the style you consider so fortunate? Which of us takes to a soldier's life more easily — the man who can't get by without expensive comforts, or the one for whom whatever comes to hand is enough? Which of us cracks first in a siege and begs for terms — the man of elaborate wants, or the man who gets along happily on whatever is easiest to find? You, Antiphon, seem to think happiness consists of luxury and extravagance. I hold a different creed: to want nothing at all is an attribute of God; to want as little as possible is to come nearest the divine; and since the divine is mightiest, whatever comes closest to the divine is next mightiest."
Antiphon returned to the attack on another occasion. "Socrates," he said, "for my part I believe you're a good and honest man — but a wise one? Hardly. And I don't think you'd dispute the verdict yourself. After all, you ask no fee for your company. Yet if it were your cloak, or your house, or anything else you own, you'd set a value on it — you'd never dream of giving it away, let alone of trading it for less than it's worth. The plain conclusion is that if you thought your company was worth anything, you'd charge nothing less than full value for that too. So there it is, as I said: good and honest you may be, since you don't cheat people out of greed; but wise you cannot be, since what you know isn't worth a penny."
To this assault Socrates answered: "Antiphon, among us it's held that beauty and wisdom have this in common: there is an honorable way and a shameful way to dispose of each. The man who sells his beauty buys himself an ugly name; but if a man discerns a fine soul in his admirer and makes that man his friend, we call the choice a sensible one. So it is with wisdom. The man who sells it for money to the first bidder, we call a sophist — as much as to say, a man who prostitutes his wisdom. But if that same man recognizes a noble nature in someone, teaches him every good thing he knows, and makes a friend of him, we say he's doing exactly what a good and generous citizen ought to do. I have my tastes, Antiphon, like anyone else. One man delights in a good horse, another in his hounds, another in his fighting cocks; my delight is good friends. Whatever good thing I have, I teach it to them, and I introduce them to others who I think will help them along the road to virtue. And the treasures the wise men of old have left behind, written in their books — I unroll those and read them through together with my friends, and if we spot anything good, we pick it out eagerly, and we count it great gain if we can only grow in friendship with one another."
Listening to this talk, I couldn't help reflecting that he, the teacher, was a man to be envied — and that we, his listeners, were being led by him toward beauty and nobility of soul.
On yet another occasion this same Antiphon asked Socrates how he expected to make statesmen of other people when he didn't take part in politics himself — assuming he even knew how. "Let me put a question to you, Antiphon," Socrates replied. "Which is the more statesmanlike course: to practice politics single-handed, or to make it my business to turn out as many people as possible who are fit for the work?"
Let's consider, finally, whether by steering his companions away from quackery and false pretenses he wasn't also spurring them directly toward virtue. He used to say there was no better road to a good name than actually becoming good at whatever you want to be reputed good at. And he drove the truth of that home like this: "Think what a man would be forced to do if he wanted to be considered a good flute player without really being one. He'd have to copy the good players in all the externals of the art, wouldn't he? First of all, since those artists travel in style with a long train of attendants, he must have the same. Next, since they can command the applause of a crowd, he must pack the hall with hired clappers. But one thing is certain: he must never actually give a performance, or he'll be exposed on the spot and laughed at — not just as a bad flute player, but as a miserable fraud. And now look at him: a mountain of expenses to meet, not one advantage to show for them, and a rotten reputation on top of it all. What's left for him but a life stale and unprofitable, the scorn and mockery of everyone? Or take another case. Suppose a man wanted to be thought a good general, or a good ship's pilot, without being anything of the kind. Picture how it goes for him. One of two misfortunes: either, for all his longing to seem qualified in these matters, he can't convince anyone — which is bad enough — or he succeeds, which is worse. Because it stands to reason that a man appointed to steer a ship or lead an army without the knowledge for it will quickly destroy the very people he'd least want to hurt, and make a sorry exit from the stage himself."
By one example after another he would show, in the same way, that it doesn't pay to appear rich, or brave, or strong, without really being the thing you pretend. "Sooner or later," he said, "demands will be laid on you that are beyond your power to meet, and when you fail exactly where everyone believed you capable, the world will give you no sympathy." "I call that man a cheat, and a great cheat too," he would say, "who talks money or goods out of someone by persuasion and defrauds him. But the biggest imposter of all is the man who has deluded his city into believing he is fit to lead it, when all the while he is worthless."
If talk like that steered his listeners away from fakery and false pretenses, then I am just as sure that talk like the following pushed his companions to practice self-control and endurance: self-control in eating, drinking, sleep, and sexual desire; endurance of cold, heat, hard work, and pain. He had noticed that one of his companions had gotten far too loose with himself in all these areas, so he took the question straight to him.
"Tell me, Aristippus," said Socrates, "suppose two boys were handed over to you to educate — one to be trained for ruling, the other with no claim to rule anything at all. How would you bring each of them up? Shall we start our inquiry at the very beginning, with the basic matter of food?"
"Food is certainly the place to start," said Aristippus. "It's a first necessity. No man alive can do without it."
"Then we can expect the urge to reach for food to show up in both boys when mealtime comes around?"
"We can."
"So which of the two should be trained to put urgent business first and his belly second — of his own free will?"
"The one being trained to rule, obviously, unless we want the state's affairs neglected while he's in charge."
"And the same boy must also be given the strength to hold out against thirst when the craving hits him?"
"Certainly he must."
"And which of the two gets the self-control over sleep — the discipline to stay up late, rise early, or keep watch all night if the need arises?"
"That endurance goes to the same one."
"And self-control in sexual matters, strong enough that no desire ever keeps him from his duty — which of them claims that?"
"The same one again."
"And which of the two receives, as a further gift, the willingness to face hard work head-on rather than turn and run from it?"
"That too belongs by rights to the one being trained to rule."
"And which of them is the fitter candidate for learning every skill that helps in mastering an opponent?"
"Our future ruler, without question. Without that kind of knowledge, everything else he can do is simply wasted."
"And won't a man educated this way be harder to trap than other creatures? You know how some animals get caught — through their own greed. Some of them are naturally shy, but appetite pulls them toward the bait anyway, and they're hooked. Others are snared just the same way with drink."
"Undoubtedly."
"And others fall victim to lust — quails, for instance, or partridges, which rush toward the hen's call, hot with desire and dreaming of pleasure, lose all power to calculate the danger, and fly straight into the hunter's nets."
Aristippus agreed.
"And isn't it a disgraceful thing for a man to be caught exactly like the silliest bird or beast? Think of the adulterer who sneaks into the women's quarters of another man's house knowing precisely what he risks — the penalties the law threatens, the trap he might be caught in, the humiliation that follows if he is. With all those horrors hanging over the adulterer's head, and with so many honest ways available to relieve his desire safely, to drive headlong onto the rocks anyway — what do we call that but madness? A man who behaves that way must surely be possessed by some evil spirit?"
"So it seems to me."
"And doesn't it strike you as strangely careless that, while most of life's essential business — war, farming, more than half of everything else — has to be carried on under the open sky, most men never train themselves at all to handle cold and heat?"
Aristippus agreed again.
"And don't you agree that the man who is going to rule must train himself to bear all these things lightly?"
"Absolutely."
"So if we rank the people with self-control in all these matters as fit to rule, shouldn't we rank the people incapable of it as having no claim to rule whatsoever?"
"Agreed."
"Well then — since you know where each of the two classes stands, has it ever occurred to you to ask which of them you're entitled to belong to?"
"It has," replied Aristippus, "and I don't dream for a moment of placing myself among those who want to rule. Providing for your own private needs is serious work as it is; to my mind only a fool refuses to be content with that and saddles himself with supplying a whole community with whatever it happens to want on top of it. For a man to give up so much of his own enjoyment in order to stand at the head of a state — and then, if he fails to deliver every last item on that state's wish list, to be held criminally accountable for it — that seems to me the very height of folly. Why, states expect to treat their rulers exactly the way I treat my household slaves. I expect my servants to keep me generously supplied with everything I need, and never to lay a finger on any of it themselves. And that's just how states see the ruler's job: provide them with every good thing imaginable, and keep his own hands off the whole pile. So here's my offer. If anyone wants a heap of trouble for himself and the privilege of being a nuisance to everyone else, I'll educate him along your lines and enroll him among the ones fit to rule. As for me, put me down with the people who want to spend their days as easily and pleasantly as possible."
"Then shall we turn at this point," said Socrates, "and ask which of the two actually lives more pleasantly — the rulers or the ruled?"
"By all means, let's."
"Start with the nations and peoples we know. In Asia, the Persians rule, while the Syrians, Phrygians, and Lydians are ruled. In Europe, the Scythians rule and the Maeotians are ruled. In Africa, the Carthaginians rule and the Libyans are ruled. Which of each pair leads the happier life, in your opinion? Or come closer to home — you're a Greek yourself. Among the Greeks, who do you think is better off, the dominant cities or the subject ones?"
"Now hold on," exclaimed Aristippus. "Understand me: I'm just as far from enrolling myself among the slaves. There is, I take it, a middle road between the two, and that's the one I intend to walk — avoiding rule and slavery alike, straight through freedom, the high road that leads to happiness."
"If only your road could avoid human beings," said Socrates, "the way it avoids rule and slavery, there might be something in what you say. But you live in the middle of human beings. If you refuse to rule and refuse to be ruled, and won't willingly pay court to the men who do rule, I think you can see that the strong know very well how to make the weak sit and weep for it — in public and in private — and to use them as slaves. Surely you've noticed the standard pattern: one group of people sows and plants, and another group marches in, cuts their grain, fells their fruit trees, and lays siege to them from every side, because the weaker party wouldn't pay proper respect — until at last they're persuaded to accept slavery rather than fight a war against stronger men. And in private life the same, as you'll admit: the bold and powerful are known to reduce the helpless and timid to servitude, and to live very comfortably off their victims."
"Ah, but I have a simple remedy against all such misfortunes," said Aristippus. "I don't lock myself into any single community. I roam the whole world as a foreigner."
"Now that," said Socrates, "is a masterstroke, I must say. Ever since Sinis and Sciron and Procrustes died, of course, nobody has laid a hand on a traveler. And yet — think about it — the men who live in their own states today still pass laws to protect themselves against wrongdoing. Beyond their families and personal connections they gather crowds of friends around them; they ring their cities with walls and battlements; they collect weapons to fend off evildoers; and to make security doubly sure, they line up allies from foreign states as well. With all that defensive machinery in place, these free citizens still occasionally fall victim to injustice. But you — with none of those protections; you, who spend half your days on the open roads, where more crimes are committed than anywhere else; you, who in whatever city you enter rank below the least of its citizens; you, exactly the sort of person that anyone bent on mischief singles out for attack — you, on the strength of a foreigner's passport, expect to be exempt from harm? Is that your comfort? Will the city authorities send a herald around on your behalf — 'The person of this man Aristippus is secure; let his comings and goings be free from danger'? Or does your real confidence rest on something else — the knowledge that you'd make the kind of slave no master would care to keep? Because who would want a man in his house who refuses to work and has such expensive tastes? But let's stop and consider that very point: how do masters deal with a slave of that sort? Don't they discipline his appetites with starvation? Block his thieving with bars and bolts wherever there's anything to steal? Stop him from running off with chains and confinement? Drive the laziness out of him with the whip? Isn't that how it goes? Or how do you proceed when you find those tendencies in one of your own servants?"
"I punish him with every misery there is," said Aristippus, "until I force him to serve me properly. But Socrates — back to your pupil, the one educated in the royal art of ruling, which you apparently take to be happiness. How exactly is he better off than the people who suffer all these hardships against their will? He'll go hungry and thirsty, shiver with cold, lie awake through the night, and take every other punishment on the list — voluntarily. For my part, I can't see what difference it makes to the bare back that takes the whipping whether the whipping was requested or not. Nor, for that matter, does it make any difference to my body in general — provided it's my body — whether the whole army of such evils besieges me with my consent or without it. Except for one thing: the folly that comes attached to suffering by choice."
"Really, Aristippus?" said Socrates. "Do you see no difference at all between voluntary and involuntary hardship? The man who goes hungry by choice can eat whenever he likes, and the man who goes thirsty of his own free will can drink, and so on down the whole list — while the man who suffers those things under compulsion can't stop suffering when he feels like it. Besides, the man who takes hardship on willingly faces his troubles cheerfully, because hope keeps him afloat — the way a hunter chasing wild game finds the work a pleasure, because he hopes to make the catch. And game is a cheap prize for all that labor. What shall we say, then, of the men who work to win themselves good friends, or to defeat their enemies, or to gain the strength of body and soul to manage their households well, to help their friends and serve the country that raised them? Won't they work toward those high goals gladly, and live with real satisfaction — carried along not only by their own good conscience but by the praise and admiration of everyone around them? And one thing more: lazy habits and the fleeting pleasures of the moment can never produce a fit body, as the athletic trainers tell us, and they plant no knowledge worth having in the soul. But disciplined effort in pursuit of fine and noble ends brings men through, in the end, to the goal — so the good men tell us. Hesiod says it somewhere:
"Wickedness you can gather easily and in bulk: the road is smooth, and she lives close by. But in front of virtue the immortal gods have set toil and sweat. The path to her is long and steep, and rough at the start — yet when you reach the summit, then the path grows easy, hard as it was.
"And Epicharmus gives the same testimony when he says:
"The gods sell us every good thing at the price of our labors.
"And in another place he cries:
"Don't set your heart on the soft things, fool, or you'll end up with the hard ones.
"And the wise Prodicus says much the same about virtue in that composition of his about Heracles — the one he has recited to such crowds. As near as I can remember it, it goes like this.
"When Heracles was passing from boyhood into the bloom of youth — the age when the young, standing on the edge of independence, first show plainly whether they will take the path of virtue or the path of vice — he went out to a quiet place and sat down, debating with himself which of the two roads he should take. And as he sat there thinking, two women of great stature seemed to approach him. One was beautiful to look at and naturally noble: her body graced by purity, her eyes by modesty; her bearing was sober, and her dress was white. The other was fed soft and fleshy; her skin was made up to look whiter and rosier than it really was, and her figure padded to look taller than nature had made her. Her eyes were wide open and staring, and her dress was cut to show off every ripening charm. She kept inspecting herself, and glancing around to see whether anyone else had noticed her, and looking back again and again at her own shadow.
"When the two came near Heracles, the first kept walking toward him at the same even pace, but the other, desperate to get there ahead of her, ran up to the young man and cried: 'I can see, Heracles, that you're torn about which road through life to choose. Make me your friend, and I will lead you down the pleasantest and easiest road of all. Here is my promise: you will taste every one of life's sweets and escape every one of its bitters. First of all, you won't trouble your head with wars or responsibilities. Your only study will be what food or drink might please your palate; what sight or sound might delight you; what scent, what touch; which lover's company would thrill you most; how to pillow yourself in the softest sleep; and how to come by every single one of these pleasures with the least possible effort. And if ever the suspicion creeps in that the stream of good things might one day run dry, don't be afraid — I won't lead you anywhere you'd have to restock it by working and suffering in body and soul. No: others will do the laboring, and you will harvest the fruit of their labor, and you'll keep your hands off nothing that can turn you a profit. To all my companions I give license to help themselves from every side.'
"When Heracles heard that, he asked, 'Lady, what is your name?' And she said, 'My friends call me Happiness. The people who hate me have their own nicknames for me — Vice and Mischief.'
"And just then the other woman came forward and spoke. 'I too have come to you, Heracles. I know your parents, and I have watched your nature through your upbringing; and so I have good hope that if you take the road that leads to me, you will make yourself a great doer of fine and noble deeds, and that I myself will stand higher in honor because of you, made brighter by the shine of what you accomplish. I will not trick you with little preludes of pleasure. I will tell you the truth about how the gods have actually arranged the world. Of all that is good and admirable, the gods give nothing to men without effort and discipline. If you want the gods' favor, you must serve the gods. If you want to be loved by your friends, you must do your friends good. If you desire honor from a city, you must be useful to that city. If you expect all of Greece to admire your excellence, you must try to do Greece some good. If you want the earth to yield you crops in abundance, you must tend the earth. If you mean to grow rich from flocks and herds, you must care for the flocks and herds. If your ambition is to rise through war — to have the power to free your friends and master your enemies — you must learn the arts of war from those who know them, and practice using them in the field. And if you want a body that is strong and capable, you must teach your body to obey your mind, and train it with work and sweat.'
"At this point, as Prodicus tells it, Vice broke in. 'Do you see, Heracles, how long and hard the road is that this woman would march you down to reach her festivities? I will take you to happiness by a short and easy road.'
"Then Virtue spoke. 'You wretched creature — what good thing do you have? What do you know of pleasure, when you won't lift hand or foot to earn it? You don't even wait for desire to arrive: you're stuffed before you're hungry and drunk before you're thirsty. To make eating possible at all you have to invent armies of cooks and confectioners; to make drinking possible you lay down the costliest wines and run around hunting for ice in the middle of summer. To help you sleep, soft blankets aren't enough — you need feather beds and rockers to rock you, because your drowsiness comes not from work but from having absolutely nothing to do. Even the natural appetite of love you force before its time, by every trick you can invent, using men as if they were women. That is how you educate your friends: dragging them through outrages by night and sleeping them through the most precious hours of the day. You are immortal, but the gods have cast you out of their company, and good men despise you. The sweetest sound of all — the sound of your own praise — you have never heard; and the fairest of all sights you have never seen, for you have never once beheld a fine deed done by your own hand. Who would believe a word you say? Who would give you anything you needed? What sane man would dare to join your reveling crew? Your followers are a sorry sight: while they're young their bodies are feeble, and when they're old their minds are foolish. Through their youth they're kept sleek and idle at no cost of effort; through old age they drag themselves along, withered and wretched — ashamed of everything they've done, and crushed by everything still left to do. They raced through their pleasures in their youth and stored up the bitterness for the end. But my company is with the gods, and with the good among men; no fine deed, divine or human, is done without me. I am honored first among the gods, and honored among the men whose right it is to honor me: a beloved fellow-worker to craftsmen, a faithful guardian of house and land to owners, a kindly helper to servants, a good partner in the labors of peace, a steadfast ally in the work of war, and the best of companions in friendship. My friends enjoy their food and drink with real pleasure and no fuss, because they wait until they want it; and sleep comes sweeter to them than to the idle. They aren't bitter about giving it up, either, and they never let it crowd out their duty. Among my people, the young delight in the praise of their elders and the old take pride in the honor of the young; they remember their past deeds with pleasure and are glad to do today's work well. Because of me they are dear to the gods, loved by their friends, and honored by their countries. And when the appointed end comes, they do not lie forgotten and dishonored — their memory blooms on, and their praise is sung forever. Toils like these, Heracles, child of noble parents, are yours to take up; and if you endure them, the most blessed happiness there is will belong to you.'
"That, Aristippus, is a rough sketch of how Prodicus tells the education of Heracles by Virtue — though he dressed his thoughts, I admit, in far more magnificent language than I've managed just now. It might be worth your while to take some of this to heart, and to give a little thought to the part of your life that still lies ahead."
He once noticed that Lamprocles, the elder of his sons, was in a foul temper with his mother, and he took the boy aside.
"Tell me, son," he said, "have you ever heard of people being called ungrateful?"
"Of course," the young man replied.
"And do you understand what a person does to earn that name?"
"Yes. When someone has been treated kindly, and could repay the kindness but doesn't, people call him ungrateful."
"So the ungrateful get counted among wrongdoers?"
"They do."
"And have you ever asked yourself whether ingratitude might work the way enslaving prisoners does — wrong when done to friends, but defensible when done to enemies?"
"I have thought about that. My view is that whoever the kindness comes from, friend or enemy, the person who receives it ought to try to repay it, and if he doesn't, he's in the wrong."
"Then if that's how the matter stands, ingratitude is wrongdoing pure and simple?"
Lamprocles agreed.
"And it follows that the greater the benefit a person receives, the greater the wrong if he fails to repay it?"
He agreed again.
"Then where," Socrates went on, "will we ever find greater benefits than the ones children receive from their parents? Their father and mother brought them out of nothing into existence, gave them the sight of all this beauty and a share in all the blessings the gods give humankind — things we prize so highly that every one of us shudders at the thought of leaving them, and states have made death the penalty for the worst crimes because there is no greater evil to hold wrongdoing in check.
"Don't imagine people have children just for the physical pleasure of it. The streets and the brothels are full of ways to satisfy that. No — what we plainly look for is the kind of wife who will give us the finest children; we marry her, and we carry on the family. The man's duty is double: to provide for the woman who is going to raise children alongside him, and to lay up for those children, before they are even born, everything he thinks will help them live well — as much of it as he can. The woman carries her precious burden through discomfort and pain, at the risk of her own life, sharing with the child inside her the very food that feeds her. And when she has carried it to the end and brought it into the world through hard labor, she feeds it and watches over it tenderly — not in return for any good it has done her, because a baby doesn't know who is being kind to it and can't even signal what it wants. She has to guess what it needs and what will comfort it, and try to supply both; and she feeds it night and day for months on end, putting up with the drudgery without any idea what thanks she will ever see for it. And the care doesn't stop at nursing. When the children are old enough to learn, the parents teach them whatever useful knowledge they have as a guide to life; and where they think someone else is better qualified, they send the children to him and pay for the lessons — doing everything in their power to see their children turn out as good as possible."
"Fine," the young man answered. "Suppose she has done all that, and twenty times more. Nobody on earth could stand my mother's temper."
"Which do you think is harder to bear," said Socrates, "a wild animal's savagery or a mother's?"
"A mother's — at least when the mother is mine."
"Really! And has this mother ever actually injured you, the way animals injure people — bitten you, say, or kicked you?"
"No, but she says things a person would sooner die than listen to."
"And how many annoyances do you suppose you have caused her — whining and fussing in word and deed, night and day, since you were a little boy? How much grief and worry when you were sick?"
"Well, I never said or did anything to make her ashamed of me."
"Oh, come now. Do you think it's harder for you to listen to your mother than for one actor to listen to another on the tragic stage, when the floodgates of abuse really open?"
"No — because the actor knows it's all talk. The character cross-examining him won't fine him; the one hurling threats won't hurt him. That's why they take it so easily."
"Then why should you fly into a rage? You know perfectly well that whatever your mother says, she not only means you no harm — she is wishing more blessings down on your head than on anyone else alive. Or do you actually believe your mother wants the worst for you?"
"No, I don't believe that."
"So here is a mother who wants the best for you, who nurses you when you're sick to make you well again and to see that you lack nothing, and who on top of all that is forever praying to heaven for blessings on you and paying vows on your behalf — and you call her harsh and impossible? My own view is that if you can't stand a mother like that, you can't stand your own good luck.
"Tell me this," he went on. "Is there anyone alive you think you owe service to? Or are you prepared to stand entirely alone — to please nobody, try to please nobody, follow nobody, obey no general and no ruler of any kind? Is that your position, or do you admit you owe allegiance to somebody?"
"Of course I owe allegiance."
"Then take your neighbor. You're willing to keep on his good side, so that he'll kindle a fire for you when you need one, lend a ready hand when things go well, and stand by you like a friend if you stumble into trouble?"
"I am."
"And the stranger you happen to travel with, by land or sea — the chance acquaintances you fall in with — is it nothing to you whether these people become friends or not, or do you admit their goodwill is worth taking some trouble to earn?"
"It's worth it."
"So that's where we've landed: you're prepared to pay attention to this stranger and that one, but to your mother, who loves you more than anyone else does, you owe no service and no allegiance? Don't you know that the state ignores ordinary ingratitude — it brings no charges against people who fail to return a kindness — but for one case it saves its penalties? If a man fails to give his parents the service and respect he owes them, the law lays its finger on him: his name is struck from the roll, and he is barred from holding the archonship — as much as to say that sacrifices offered for the state by such a man would be no offerings at all, being tainted with impiety, and that nothing else he did could be done 'well and justly' either. More than that: if a man neglects to tend his dead parents' grave, the state looks into it when it examines its magistrates for office. So, my son, if you have any sense, you will beg your mother's pardon — before the gods take you for an ungrateful man and refuse to do you good, and before your fellow men notice how you neglect your parents and despise you for it with one voice, leaving you stranded in a desert without a friend. Because once people get the idea that here is a man ungrateful to his own parents, nobody will believe that a kindness done to him would be anything but thrown away."
Two brothers he knew well, Chaerephon and Chaerecrates, had fallen out, and this had caught his attention. When he next saw the younger of the two, he raised the matter with him.
"Tell me, Chaerecrates — you're not one of those strange people, surely, who believe property is better and more precious than a brother? Property is a senseless thing that needs protecting; a brother is a sensible, feeling being who can do the protecting. Besides, a man has plenty of property and only one of him. And here's another marvel: a man counts his brother a loss because his brother's goods aren't his own — yet he doesn't count his fellow citizens a loss, though their possessions aren't his either. In their case he has the wit to see that living securely among many people, with enough for himself, beats owning a whole city's wealth and living in dangerous isolation; but apply the same reasoning to brothers, and suddenly nobody's listening. Again, a man of means will buy slaves because he wants help with his work, and he'll go out and acquire friends because he needs their support — but his brother? Who cares about brothers? Apparently a friend can be found in any ordinary citizen, but not in your own flesh and blood. And yet coming from the same parents and being nursed at the same breast is a great head start toward friendship — even animals feel a natural pull toward the creatures they were raised with. On top of all that, the world respects a man with brothers more than a man who stands alone and has to fight his own battles."
"I grant you, Socrates," Chaerecrates answered, "that when the quarrel is a small one, a man ought to bear with his brother and not shun him over some trifle. A brother of the right sort is a blessing, just as you say. But when he's the exact opposite of that, why should a man attempt the impossible?"
"Tell me, then — is there nobody Chaerephon can please, any more than he can please you? Or do some people find him perfectly agreeable?"
"That's exactly why I have a right to detest him. He can be pleasant enough to other people; but let him come anywhere near me, and everything about him is the opposite of a blessing."
"Might it be like a horse?" said Socrates. "A horse is no use to the rider who doesn't know how to handle him — and a brother 'kicks,' too, when someone tries to deal with him without knowing how."
"But how could I not know how to deal with my own brother, when I know how to return a kind word and a good deed in kind? A man who does everything he can to needle me, in word and deed — him I can neither speak well of nor treat well, and what's more, I won't try."
"That's an astonishing thing to say, Chaerecrates. If your dog — a good one, useful with the flocks — fawned on your shepherds but growled and bared his teeth whenever you came near, you wouldn't waste time on his bad temper; you'd try to win him over with kindness. But your brother? A brother who acted as a brother should would be a great blessing to you — you admit that; and you confess you know the secret of kind words and kind deeds; and yet you won't set yourself to make him the best friend you have."
"I'm afraid, Socrates, I simply don't have the skill to make Chaerephon treat me as he should."
"Yet there's no elaborate or newfangled machinery required. Bait your hook the way you know best, and you'll catch him — and once caught, he'll be your devoted friend."
"If you know I possess some love-charm without being aware of it," said Chaerecrates, "hurry up and enlighten me."
"Answer me this, then. If you wanted an acquaintance to invite you to dinner the next time he holds a feast, what would you do?"
"Obviously I'd set the example by inviting him first."
"And if you wanted a friend to look after your affairs while you were abroad?"
"Obviously I'd first undertake to look after his when he traveled."
"And if you wanted a foreign host to take you under his roof when you visited his country?"
"Obviously I'd start by offering him my own roof when he came to Athens, and show myself eager to further whatever business brought him — so that he'd be just as eager to do the same for me."
"Well then! It turns out you know every charm known to man — you've simply been hiding the knowledge all this time. Or are you shrinking from the first move because it would look bad to make friendly advances to your own brother? A man is generally thought to deserve praise for beating an enemy to the blow and beating a friend to the kindness. If Chaerephon had seemed to me the fitter of you two to lead the way toward friendship, I would have tried to persuade him to make the first move. As it is, I'm convinced the first step belongs to you — and so does the final victory."
"That's a startling thing to hear from you, Socrates, and most unlike you — telling me, the younger, to take the lead ahead of my elder brother. Everywhere in the world it's the other way around: the elder leads, in word and in deed."
"How so? Isn't it the custom everywhere for the younger to step aside when he meets his elder in the street, to stand and offer him his seat, to honor him with the soft couch, to yield to him in argument? Don't stand there dithering, my good friend. Reach out your hand gently, and you'll see how quickly the worthy soul responds. Look at your brother's character — proud, open, quick where honor is concerned. Mean little scoundrels are best caught with a bribe; that's the way with riffraff. But a fine nature needs finer handling. You win natures like his with affection."
"And suppose I do all that," said Chaerecrates, "and for all my trying he's no better?"
"At the worst, you will have shown yourself a good, honest, brotherly man, and he will stand exposed as a sorry creature that kindness is wasted on. But I don't expect anything of the sort. My belief is that the moment he hears your challenge, he'll leap into the contest, and out of sheer competitive pride he'll strain to outdo you in kindness of word and deed.
"Right now the two of you are like a pair of hands that God made to help each other but that have quit their work and taken to hindering each other instead — like a pair of feet fashioned on the divine plan to work together, which have given that up in order to trip each other. Isn't it plain mindless stupidity to use for harm what was made for help? And in making two brothers, it seems to me, God intends more benefit for each than he gets from two hands, or two feet, or two eyes, or any of the other pairs a man is born with. Ask your hands to work together at two points more than a fathom apart — six feet — and they can't do it; your feet can't stretch across even a single fathom; your eyes, for all the range we claim for them, can't see the front and back of an object at the same time even up close. But two brothers bound in friendship can work for each other's good with whole seas between them."
I once heard him discuss the related subject of friendship itself, in terms that seemed to me exactly calculated to help a man choose his friends well and use them well.
He had heard it said, times without number, that of all possessions none equals a good and honest friend; and yet, as far as he could see, most people troubled themselves about anything sooner than acquiring friends. Houses, fields, slaves, cattle, furniture of every sort — these they worked hard to get and strove hard to keep; but the greatest blessing of all, which by their own admission a friend is, hardly one man in a hundred ever thought about gaining, or about keeping the friends he already had. Let a friend and a household slave fall sick at the same time, and watch what happens: the master promptly fetches the doctor for his slave and spares no pains or expense on his recovery, while the friend in the same condition gets barely a thought. If both die, he is visibly upset about the slave — that, as he reckons it, is a real loss — while his friend's death leaves his position, as he sees it, untouched. And so, though he would never dream of leaving his other possessions neglected and uncared for, the friend, who asks for nothing, gets nothing.
And the crowning example, he said, is this: however much ordinary property people own, most of them at least know how much of it there is. But ask a man to count his friends — not so very long a list, after all — and he can't do it; and if, to oblige you, he starts naming names, he'll soon take back some he had already put down. That is how much thought people spend on their friends.
And yet set any other possession beside a good friend, and which comes off better? A horse has its worth; so does a yoke of oxen; but who can measure the worth of a worthy friend? Kinder and more constant than the most faithful of slaves, he is the one possession that truly deserves the name "good for everything." Look at the post he assigns himself: wherever his friends' welfare falls short, he steps in to make up the lack; their interests, private and public alike, are his concern. Is a kindness wanted somewhere? He throws in his full weight. Does some terror loom? He is on hand to help and defend — spending his money, spending his energy, joining in persuasion or, if it comes to that, in force. He is the man who gladdens the prosperous in their hour of success and steadies those whose footing has nearly gone. Whatever a man's own hands can do for him, whatever his eyes can see and his ears hear and his feet can cover, a friend's good offices will match; and often enough, what a man has failed to accomplish for himself, has missed seeing or hearing or getting, a friend acting on his behalf will achieve for him. And still — though people will carefully tend a tree for the sake of its fruit — more than half the world pays only a lazy, drifting attention to this richest of all possessions, a friend.
I remember another argument of his whose whole effect was to push the listener into self-examination — to make him ask himself, "What am I actually worth to my friends?" It came about like this. He had noticed that one of his companions was neglecting a friend who was hard pressed by poverty. So, in front of the neglectful man and several others, he put his questions to the poor man himself, Antisthenes.
"Tell me, Antisthenes," he said, "do friends have their values, the way household slaves do? One slave may be worth two minae, another only half a mina, a third five, a fourth as much as ten; and they say that Nicias, the son of Niceratus, paid a whole talent for a superintendent for his silver mines. So I've been putting the question to myself: do friends, like slaves, have their market prices?"
"No doubt about it," Antisthenes replied. "I know a man I would rather have as my friend than be paid two minae, and another I wouldn't value at half a mina, and a third I wouldn't part with for ten — and then there's one whose friendship would be cheap even if it cost me all the money and effort in the world to win it."
"Well then," Socrates went on, "if that's so, wouldn't it be a good thing for every man to examine himself and ask what he happens to be worth to his friends — and then try to make himself as valuable as possible, so that his friends won't be tempted to give him up? How often I hear the complaint: 'My friend So-and-so has dropped me,' or 'A man I counted a friend sold me out for a mina.' And every time I hear it, the question comes to me: if the owner of a worthless slave is ready to sell him to any buyer for whatever he'll fetch, isn't there at least a strong temptation to let a worthless friend go when there's something to be gained on the exchange? What I never see is good slaves being sold off that way — or good friends lightly given up."
Then there is the question of testing — how do you tell whether a friend is worth winning before you commit? On that subject, I think what Socrates said to Critobulus could not fail to be instructive.
"Tell me," he said, "suppose we found ourselves in need of a good and honest friend — how would we go about finding one? First, I suppose, we would look for a man who is master of his appetites: not ruled by his belly, not addicted to wine or sex or sleep or laziness. No one enslaved to tyrants like those could do his duty by himself or by his friends, could he?"
"Certainly not," Critobulus answered.
"Then you agree we should keep our distance from anyone under that kind of rule?"
"Absolutely."
"Well then," Socrates went on, "what about the spendthrift, who can never stand on his own feet and is forever begging from his neighbors — who can't repay what he gets, and hates you when you refuse to give? Don't you think he too would make a disagreeable friend?"
"Certainly."
"So we keep away from him as well?"
"We must."
"And what about the man whose great talent is money dealings? His one craving is to pile up cash, which makes him an expert at driving a hard bargain — delighted to take in, very reluctant to pay out."
"In my opinion he's an even worse specimen than the last."
"And the man whose passion for making money is so consuming that he has no time for anything that doesn't add to his gains?"
"Keep away from him too, I say. There's no good to be had from him or his company."
"And the quarrelsome, factious type, whose chief accomplishment is saddling his friends with a crowd of enemies?"
"For God's sake, let's avoid him as well."
"Now imagine a man free of every one of those defects — a man with no objection to receiving kindness, but it never enters his head to return any."
"There's no use in him either. But Socrates, what kind of man should we try to make our friend? What does he look like?"
"The exact opposite of all the above, I'd say. He has control over the pleasures of the body; he is kind, and fair in all his dealings; and he is fiercely determined never to be outdone in kindness by anyone who treats him well, so that his friends actually profit from knowing him."
"But how do we test those qualities, Socrates, before we know the man?"
"How do we test a sculptor? Not by listening to the artist talk. We look at what he has already made: if his earlier statues were beautifully done, we trust the next ones will be too."
"You mean if we find a man who has treated his old friends well, we can take it as proved that he'll treat his new ones just as well?"
"Certainly. When I see a man who has handled horses skillfully before, I expect him to handle the next ones skillfully too."
"Good. And once we've found a man whose friendship is worth having, how do we make him our friend?"
"First we should ask the will of Heaven whether it's advisable to make him our friend at all."
"Well, and suppose the gods approve our choice — how do we go about capturing him? Will you tell me that?"
"Not by running him down like a hare," said Socrates, "not by decoying him like a bird, and not by force like a wild boar. Capturing a friend against his will is heavy labor, and chaining him up like a slave is no easy business either. Men treated that way tend to become enemies, not friends."
"Then how do we turn them into friends?"
"They say there are incantations that those who know them need only recite to make a friend of anyone they please — and love potions too, which those who hold the secret can slip to whomever they like and win their affection."
"And where would we learn them?"
"You needn't go any farther than Homer for the one the Sirens sang to Odysseus. It begins, I think, like this: 'Come hither, come, Odysseus, famous man, great glory of the Achaeans!'"
"And did that spell work on everyone, Socrates? Did the Sirens only have to sing that one incantation, and every listener was rooted to the spot?"
"No. That was the incantation reserved for souls hungry for fame and in love with virtue."
"Which is as much as to say we must fit the incantation to the listener, so that when he hears it he doesn't suspect the enchanter is laughing at him behind his hand. I certainly can't imagine a better recipe for hatred and disgust than going up to a man who knows he is small and ugly and weak, and murmuring in his ear that he is tall and handsome and strong. But do you know any other love-charms, Socrates?"
"I can't say I do. Though I've heard that Pericles knew quite a few, which he poured into the ear of our city until she loved him."
"And how did Themistocles win the city's love?"
"Ah, that was no incantation at all. What he did was hang around her neck an amulet of real protection."
"You're implying, aren't you, Socrates, that if we want to win the love of a good man, we must be good ourselves — in what we say and what we do?"
"Did you imagine a bad man could make good friends?"
"Well," said Critobulus, "I could swear I've seen sorry public speakers on the closest terms with great and noble statesmen, and men utterly incapable of command who were boon companions of born generals."
"But to stick to the point we were discussing: do you know of anyone who can attach a useful friend to himself without being useful in return? Can service and disservice make an alliance?"
"Honestly, no. But grant that a worthless man can't be friends with the beautiful and good — then here is what worries me next: can a man who is himself beautiful and good attach himself, with a wave of the hand as it were, to every other beautiful and good nature?"
"What perplexes you, Critobulus, is that so often men of noble conduct, men whose souls are far above anything base, are not friends at all but at strife with one another — and treat each other more harshly than they would treat the most worthless of mankind."
"Yes, and it isn't only private individuals. Whole cities — the very ones most devoted to noble policy and least tolerant of anything base — are frequently at war with one another. When I think about that, my heart sinks, and the whole question of how friends are won fills me with despair. The bad, as I see it, can't be friends with each other. How could the ungrateful, the reckless, the greedy, the faithless, the self-indulgent hold together as friends? Without hesitation I set the bad down as born to be enemies, not friends — it's stamped on them from birth. But then, as you suggest, neither can they harmonize with the good. How should men who do evil be friends with men who hate all evil-doing? And if, on top of everything, the very men who cultivate virtue tear each other apart fighting for first place in their cities, envying one another, hating one another — then who is left to be friends? Where in the world are goodwill and loyalty to be found?"
"The truth is, Critobulus, there's some subtlety in the weave of these things. Nature planted the seeds of friendship in human beings. We need one another; we feel pity; we help each other by joining forces, and we're grateful when we're helped. But nature planted seeds of war as well. Since we all find the same things beautiful and pleasant, we fight over their possession; disagreement creeps in, and men range themselves in opposite camps. Quarreling and anger sound the note of war; the passion for always having more is a hostile force; and envy is a hateful fiend.
"And yet through every one of those barriers friendship steals her way and binds the beautiful and good together. Such is their virtue that they would rather own a modest living in peace than rule an empire won by war. Hungry and thirsty as they may be, they can share their food and drink without a pang. Neither the bloom of youth nor the delights of love can crack their self-control or tempt them to cause pain where none should be. They don't merely renounce greed and divide wealth justly and lawfully — they supply what is missing from one another's needs. They can settle quarrels, not just harmlessly but to everyone's advantage. They can keep anger from running to lengths a man would repent of later. And envy they sweep away entirely: a good man treats what he owns as belonging to his friends, and what his friends own as belonging to him. Is it really so improbable, then, that the beautiful and good should share the honors of the state not only without injuring each other, but to their mutual advantage?
"Men who covet honors and offices for the license they give — to embezzle public money, to bully their fellow men, to wallow in luxury — such men are unjust and rotten, and incapable of harmony with anyone. But if a man wants those same honors so that he can be secure against wrongdoing himself, help his friends in what is right, and, once raised to high position, try to do his country some good — what is there to stop him from working in harmony with another man of the same spirit? Will he be less able to help his friends with the beautiful and good at his side? Will his power to benefit the community shrink because the flower of the community are his fellow workers? Even in the athletic games it's obvious that if the strongest competitors were allowed to combine against the weakest, that team would win every event and carry off every prize. The rules of the arena forbid it — but in politics, where the beautiful and good hold the field and no one stops you from joining with anyone you please for the city's benefit, surely it's pure gain for a public man to make the best men his friends: partners and collaborators in his work instead of rivals and obstacles. And this much is obvious too: if it comes to war with a foreign power, a man will need allies — and all the more if the men lined up against him are the flower of the enemy. Besides, those willing to fight your battles must be treated well, so that goodwill can quicken into real enthusiasm; and one good man is a better investment than a dozen scoundrels, because a little kindness goes a long way with the good, while the base only ask for more the more you give them.
"So keep your spirits up, Critobulus. Just try to become good yourself, and once you've managed that, set your hand to capturing the beautiful and good. Perhaps I can even help you in the hunt, being something of an expert in the lore of love. Whenever my heart is set on someone, my whole soul leaps toward him: I love, and I demand to be loved in return; I long for him, and need him to long for me; I thirst for his company, and need him to thirst for mine. You will need all the same things, I can see, whenever you're seized by the desire for a friendship. So don't hide from me whom you'd like as a friend. I take such pains to please anyone who pleases me that I'm not entirely unpracticed, I think, in the art of catching men."
"Why, Socrates," Critobulus replied, "those are exactly the lessons I've been thirsting for — especially if this same lore of love will let me capture men who are good in soul and beautiful in person."
"Now hold on, Critobulus. Nothing in my science makes the beautiful stand still while somebody lays hands on them. I'm convinced men fled from Scylla precisely because she laid hands on them; the Sirens laid hands on nobody — they sat far off and sang their spells into every ear, and so, the story goes, all men stayed to listen and were charmed."
"I promise I won't lay hands on anyone. So if you have a good device for winning friends, teach your pupil."
"And if there's to be no laying on of hands, no touching of lips either — agreed?"
"Agreed. I won't put my lips to anyone's — who isn't beautiful."
"There you go, Critobulus — you can't open your mouth without some luckless remark. The beautiful won't stand for that kind of liberty, however eagerly the ugly invite it, flattering themselves that some quality of soul makes them beautiful too."
"Be of good cheer, then. Let our compact stand: kisses for the beautiful, and for the good, a rain of kisses. Now teach us the art of catching friends."
"Well then. When you want to win someone's affection, will you allow me to inform on you — to report to him that you admire him and want to be his friend?"
"File the charge, with all my heart. I never heard of anyone who hated his admirers."
"And if I add a second charge — that because you admire him, you feel real goodwill toward him — you won't think I'm blackening your character?"
"No. For my part, I know a warm feeling springs up in me toward anyone I believe feels warmly toward me."
"All that, then, I'll feel free to say about you to the men whose friendship you want. And I can promise further help — on one large condition: that you authorize me to say you are devoted to your friends; that nothing delights you like a good and honest friend; that you take as much pride in your friends' fine deeds as in your own, and as much pleasure in their good fortune as in yours; that you never tire of scheming and planning to bring them a rich harvest of both; and that you have discovered a man's virtue is to outdo his friends in kindness and his enemies in harm. Authorize that report, and I think you'll find me a useful fellow hunter in the quest for friends — which is the conquest of the good."
"Why ask my permission — as if you weren't free to say whatever you like about me?"
"No, that I deny, on the authority of Aspasia. I have it from her own lips. Good matchmakers, she told me, are wonderfully effective at bringing people together — so long as the good qualities they vouch for are truthfully reported. But lies she could not recommend: the poor deluded victims end up hating each other and the go-between as well. I'm so thoroughly persuaded she's right that I don't believe I have the power to say anything in your praise that I can't say truthfully."
"What a wonderfully good friend you are to me, Socrates! If I have any merit that entitles me to win a friend, you'll lend me a hand — otherwise, you'd rather not invent even the smallest fiction for my benefit."
"And which way do you think I'd help you more — by praising you falsely, or by persuading you to try to be a good man? If it isn't obvious, look at it by the light of a few examples. Suppose I want to make a shipowner your friend, and I start by praising you to him falsely: 'You'll find him a good pilot.' He takes me at my word and hands his ship over to you — you, who have no idea how to steer one. What can you expect but to wreck the ship and yourself together? Or suppose by the same sort of lying I persuade the whole city to entrust its fortunes to you — 'a born commander,' I say, 'a practiced lawyer, a natural statesman.' The odds are that you and the city both come to grief through you. Or take a case from everyday life: by my lies I persuade some private citizen to hand you his affairs as 'a careful, businesslike man with a real head for management.' When the test came, wouldn't your administration be ruinous, and the figure you cut ridiculous? No, my dear friend, there is one road only — the shortest, the safest, the best — and it is simply this: whatever you want to be thought good at, try to be good at. Run through all the virtues men can name, and you'll find there isn't one that can't be increased by learning and practice. Those, Critobulus, are the principles I think we should hunt on. If you see it differently, teach me — I'm all attention."
"Really, Socrates," said Critobulus, "I'd be ashamed to argue against a word of it. If I did, what I said would be neither noble nor true."
He had two ways of dealing with his friends' difficulties. Where ignorance was the trouble, he treated it with a dose of common sense; where want and poverty were to blame, he taught them to help one another according to their means. Let me set down some incidents I know of firsthand. Once, for instance, he came across Aristarchus wearing the look of a man with a black cloud over him, and greeted him like this:
"You seem to have something weighing on your mind, Aristarchus. If so, you should share the load with your friends. Perhaps together we can lighten it a little."
"I'm in desperate straits, Socrates, and that's the truth," Aristarchus answered. "Ever since the civil strife broke out in the city, what with the rush of people down to Piraeus and all the banishments, my poor stranded female relatives have descended on me. Sisters, nieces, cousins — they've all come flocking to me for protection. I have fourteen free-born souls under my one roof, I tell you, and how are we supposed to live? We can get nothing from the land — the enemy holds it. Nothing from my houses in town — the city is nearly empty. No one will buy the furniture, and there's no money to be borrowed anywhere; you'd have better luck finding it lying in the road than getting it out of a banker. It's a hard thing, Socrates, to stand by and watch your relatives starve — and impossible to feed so many in times like these."
Socrates heard him out, then asked, "How is it that Ceramon, with just as many mouths to feed, not only manages to supply himself and his people with the necessities of life but clears a handsome surplus, while you, in the same fix, are afraid you'll all starve for lack of them?"
"Bless you — because he feeds slaves, and I have free-born souls to feed!"
"And which would you say are the better human beings — the free people in your house, or Ceramon's slaves?"
"The free souls under my roof, without a doubt."
"Then isn't it a disgrace that he should prosper on the strength of his inferior household while you, with your far superior one, are in trouble?"
"Of course it is — but he supports a set of craftsmen, and I support people with a liberal education."
"And what is a craftsman? Doesn't the word cover anyone who knows how to make something useful?"
"Certainly."
"Is barley meal useful?"
"Extremely."
"And loaves of bread?"
"No less."
"What about cloaks for men and women — tunics, mantles, vests?"
"All highly useful things."
"And the people in your house don't know how to make any of them?"
"On the contrary, I believe they can make them all."
"Then are you not aware that from just one of those trades — his barley-meal business — Nausicydes not only maintains himself and his household staff but keeps pigs and cattle besides, and clears such profits that he regularly makes voluntary contributions to the state? That Cyrebus feeds his whole establishment from a bakery and lives in comfort? That Demeas of Collytus makes his living from cloaks, Menon from mantles, and more than half of Megara from the making of vests?"
"Yes — but those men buy foreign slaves and keep them, and can force them to make whatever pays. My kinswomen are free-born ladies."
"So because they are free-born and your relatives, you think they should do nothing but eat and sleep? Is that what you observe of free people generally — that the ones who live that way are happier and more enviable than the ones who put their time into the useful skills they actually possess? Is that how the world works — that for learning what's worth knowing, and remembering what you've learned, and keeping the body healthy and strong, and getting and keeping the things that make life worth living, idleness and inattention are helpful, while work and study are a dead loss? When your relatives learned the skills you say they know, did they learn them as useless ornaments, never to be put to practical account — or as something they were meant to take seriously one day and profit by? Which makes human beings more sensible: idling, or attending to useful work? Which helps a man more toward justice and uprightness: doing, or sitting with folded hands calculating how to pay for the next meal? As things stand, if I'm not mistaken, there's no love lost in your house. You can't help feeling that they're costing you dearly, and they can see that you find them a burden. That is a dangerous state of affairs: bitterness on both sides is likely to grow, and the old affection is likely to snap.
"But give them free scope for their energies, and everything changes. When you see how useful they are, you'll grow genuinely fond of them; and when they see they can please you, they'll cling to their benefactor warmly. The memory of old kindnesses will grow sweeter, and the gratitude flowing from new ones will multiply tenfold; you'll be bound together closer, more like a family. Now, if the work in question were anything shameful, they should choose death before it. But as it is, the things they know are exactly the arts regarded as the loveliest and most fitting for women; and what any of us knows, we do easily and quickly — it's a joy to do, and the result is beautiful. So don't hesitate to propose to them what will benefit them and you alike. They will probably be glad to accept."
"Honestly, Socrates," Aristarchus answered, "what you say is so good that although until now I haven't been willing to borrow — knowing that once the money was spent I'd have no way to repay it — I think I can bring myself to do it now, to raise a fund for the work."
So capital was raised and wool was bought. The women worked while they ate their breakfast and worked on until supper ended the day, and the house grew cheerful instead of gloomy. Frowns gave way to smiles; instead of eyeing one another sideways with suspicion, they looked each other happily in the face. The women loved their kinsman for his kindness; he grew attached to them as helpers. In the end he came to Socrates and told him with delight how matters stood — "and now," he added, "they accuse me of being the only drone in the house, eating the bread of idleness."
"Then why not tell them the fable of the dog?" said Socrates. "Once upon a time, when animals could talk, the story goes, a sheep said to her master, 'It's a strange thing, master: we sheep give you fleeces and lambs and cheese, and you give us nothing we don't crop from the ground ourselves — while this dog of yours, who gives you nothing of the kind, gets shares of the very food from your own mouth.' The dog heard her and answered promptly, 'And so I should — for I'm the one who keeps you safe and sound, so that you aren't stolen by men or carried off by wolves. If I didn't stand guard over you, you couldn't so much as graze in the field for fear of being killed.' And at that, so the tale goes, the sheep admitted the dog was rightly honored above them. So tell your flock that you are the dog in the fable — their guardian and overseer — and it's thanks to you that they can do their work and live their lives in safety, with no one to harm them."
At another time he ran into an old friend he had not seen in years, and greeted him: "Where in the world have you appeared from, Eutherus?"
"From abroad, Socrates — I got back just before the war ended," he answered. "But at the moment, from right here in the city. Since we lost our holdings across the border, and my father left me nothing in Attica, I have to stay home now and earn my bread with my own hands. It seems better than begging from other people — especially since I own nothing I could borrow against."
"And how long do you expect your body to hold up, working for wages like that?"
"Honestly, Socrates — not long."
"And when you find yourself an old man, your expenses won't shrink, but no one will pay for the labor of your hands anymore."
"That's true."
"Then wouldn't it be better to take up work right now that will still support you when you're old? Go to some large landowner who needs help managing his estate. Supervise his projects, help bring in his harvest, look after his property — you'd be a benefit to the estate, and the estate would be a benefit to you."
"I couldn't stand the harness of slavery, Socrates!" he burst out.
"And yet the men who run the departments of a city aren't considered slaves for managing public property. If anything, they're considered freer than most."
"To put it plainly, Socrates, I simply can't stomach being answerable to anyone."
"And yet, Eutherus, it's hard to find any work that doesn't make you answerable to somebody. It's difficult to do anything at all without some mistake, and even if you managed to do it flawlessly, it would be difficult to escape unfair criticism. I wonder whether you get through your present work entirely free of complaints. No? Then here's what you should do. Avoid the fault-finders and attach yourself to fair-minded, considerate people. Take on what you can do with a good grace, and decline what you feel you can't. And whatever you do take on, throw your whole heart into it and make it your finest work. That is the way to silence the critics and ease your own difficulties at a stroke. Life will run more smoothly, the risks will shrink, and your old age will be provided for."
At another time, I know, he heard Crito remark that life in Athens was no easy thing for a man who wanted to mind his own business.
"Right at this moment," Crito went on, "there's a set of men threatening me with lawsuits — not because they have any wrongdoing to charge me with, but simply because they've concluded I would rather pay them off than be bothered any further."
"Tell me, Crito," Socrates replied, "you keep dogs to drive the wolves off your sheep, don't you?"
"Certainly — it more than pays for itself."
"Then why not keep a man, willing and able, to drive off this pack that's trying to prey on you?"
"I'd gladly do it," he answered, "if I weren't afraid he'd turn and savage his own keeper."
"What! Don't you see that a man like that would find it far pleasanter — and far more profitable — to gratify a man like you than to quarrel with you? Believe me, there are men in this city who would take real pride in having you for a friend."
So they sought out Archedemus — a practical man with a clever tongue in his head, but poor. He wasn't the sort to make money by hook or by crook; he loved honesty, and he was too good-natured himself to earn a living shaking people down. Crito would take the opportunity at harvest time to set aside small presents for Archedemus — grain, oil, wine, wool, whatever staples the farm produced — and he would invite him to a sacrificial feast, and show him attention in other ways. Archedemus came to feel that he had a harbor of refuge in Crito's house, and he could not do enough for his patron. Before long he had hunted up a whole list of offenses that could be lodged against Crito's shakedown artists — and not only their many crimes but their many enemies as well. Presently he prosecuted one of them in a public suit, the kind where the court decides what the defendant must suffer or what he must pay. The man, knowing how much he had to answer for, tried everything to get free of Archedemus — but Archedemus would not let go. He held on until the informer not only dropped his grip on Crito but paid Archedemus a sum of money on top of it.
Once Archedemus had won this victory and a few others like it, what followed is easy to guess. It was just like when a shepherd gets an especially good dog: the other shepherds all want to pasture their flocks nearby, so they can get the benefit of the dog too. A number of Crito's friends came begging him to let Archedemus be their guardian as well, and Archedemus was overjoyed to do Crito the favor. So it came about that not only Crito lived in peace, but his friends did too. If anyone Archedemus was on bad terms with threw it in his face that he took his patron's favors and paid for them in flattery, he had his answer ready: "Which is more shameful — to accept kindnesses from good and honest men and repay them, so that I make such men my friends and the scoundrels my enemies? Or to wrong decent, honorable men and make enemies of them, on the off chance of winning a few rogues to my side — and the certainty of ruining the company I keep?"
From then on Archedemus was Crito's right hand, and the rest of Crito's friends held him in honor.
I can also cite, from my own knowledge, the following discussion; the arguments were addressed to Diodorus, one of his companions.
"Tell me, Diodorus," Socrates said, "if one of your slaves runs away, do you take trouble to recover him?"
"More than that," Diodorus answered. "I call in others to help, and I post a reward for bringing him back."
"And if one of your household servants falls sick, do you look after him and call in doctors to save his life?"
"I certainly do."
"Then if an acquaintance — someone worth far more to you than any slave in your household — were about to perish from want, wouldn't you think it your business to take trouble to save his life? Now, you know without my telling you that Hermogenes is not made of wood or stone. If you helped him, he would be ashamed not to repay you in kind. And think what you would be getting: a willing, kindly, trustworthy helper, well suited to doing what you ask — and not just that, but capable of coming up with useful ideas on his own, a man with real foresight and judgment. A man like that is worth dozens of slaves. Good managers tell us that when something valuable can be had at a low price, that is the time to buy. And with times as bad as they are now, good and honest friends can be had exceedingly cheap."
"You're quite right, Socrates," Diodorus answered. "Tell Hermogenes to come to me."
"Tell Hermogenes to come to you? Not I! As far as I can see, you have no better right to summon him than to go to him yourself — and the gain is no more his than yours."
So Diodorus went off at once to find Hermogenes, and at no great cost he won himself a friend — a friend whose one concern from then on was to find some way, by word or deed, to help Diodorus and make him glad.
Men who set their hearts on honorable distinction got the same kind of help from Socrates: in each case he spurred them to work steadily at the thing they aimed for. The stories that follow will show what I mean.
He heard one day that Dionysodorus had arrived in Athens, advertising himself as a teacher of the whole art of generalship. Now, one of the young men in his company made no secret of wanting to be elected general, so Socrates said to him:
"It would be outrageous, wouldn't it, for a man who wants to be a general to throw away the slightest chance of learning the duties of the office? The city ought to fine and punish a man like that far more severely than the imposter who takes a contract to carve a statue without ever having learned sculpture. During a war the whole fortune of the state is placed in the general's hands, with all the danger that entails; enormous good or enormous harm follows, depending on whether he succeeds or bungles. So I put it to you, young man: wouldn't a candidate who works hard at getting elected but never bothers to learn the job richly deserve that fine?"
Arguments like this persuaded the young man to go and take the course. When he had finished it and come back, Socrates began to tease him.
"Look at our young friend, gentlemen. Homer says Agamemnon had a majestic bearing — doesn't he seem to move more majestically himself, now that he has studied generalship? A man who has learned the harp is a harpist even if he never touches the instrument; a man who has studied medicine is a doctor even if he never practices. In the same way our friend here is a general from this day forward and forever, whether or not he receives a single vote at the elections. The ignoramus without the science, on the other hand, is neither general nor doctor — not even if the whole world appoints him. But," he went on, turning to the young man, "since some of us may end up serving as captain or colonel under you, give us a taste of the science of war. Where did the professor begin his instruction in generalship? Tell us, please."
"Where he ended," the young man said. "He taught me tactics — tactics and nothing else."
"But surely," Socrates replied, "tactics are only a tiny fraction of generalship. A general must be able to furnish the equipment of war and keep his troops supplied; he must be inventive and full of practical resource; nothing can escape his eye or wear out his endurance; he must be shrewd and quick-witted, gentle and fierce at once, straightforward and cunning; a watchman and a thief; open-handed as a spendthrift one moment and tight-fisted as a miser the next, as generous in giving as he is grasping in getting; solid in defense and a daredevil in attack. These qualities and many more, whether they come by nature or by training, are what make a good general and master of war. Of course it's a fine thing to be a tactician too — there is all the difference in the world between an army properly arranged for battle and the same army in disorder. It's like building a house: stones, bricks, timber, and tiles tumbled in a heap are no use at all; but arrange them in order — the materials that won't rot or crumble, the stones and tiles, at the bottom and the top, and the bricks and timber in the middle, the way a builder does — and you end up with something valuable: a house."
"That's exactly the parallel, Socrates," said the youth. "In battle, too, the rule is to draw up your best men in the front and the rear, with the poorer ones in between, so the ones ahead can lead them and the ones behind can push them on."
"Very good — if the professor taught you to tell good men from bad. If he didn't, what use was the lesson? If someone told you to stack coins with the best coins at the top and bottom and the worst in the middle, that would hardly help you unless you'd first been taught to tell genuine coin from counterfeit."
"Well, no," said the youth, "he certainly didn't teach us that. We'd have to distinguish the good from the bad ourselves."
"Then shall we see how we might best avoid blundering between them?"
"I'm ready," he replied.
"Well then! Suppose we were raiders, and the job was to carry off a load of silver. Would we be arranging our forces rightly if we put the greediest men in the vanguard?"
"I'd say so."
"And when there's danger to be faced? Should the vanguard then be the men hungriest for honor?"
"Those are the ones, at any rate, who will face danger for the sake of praise and glory. And fortunately such men don't hide themselves in corners — they shine out everywhere, and they're easy to spot."
"But tell me, did he teach you how to draw up troops in general, or where and how to apply each particular formation?"
"Nothing of the kind."
"And yet there are countless situations in which the same order of march or battle simply won't do."
"I assure you, he drew none of those fine distinctions."
"He didn't, did he? Good heavens! Then go back to him and ply him with questions. If he really has the science, and has any shame left in him, he'll blush to have taken your money and sent you away empty-handed."
Another time he fell in with a man who had been elected general and master of war, and greeted him with this:
"Why do you suppose Homer calls Agamemnon 'shepherd of the people'? Could it be to show that just as a shepherd must care for his sheep — keep them safe, see they have everything they need, and secure the purpose they're raised for — so a general must care for his soldiers: keep them safe, keep them supplied, and achieve the purpose they soldier for? And that purpose is to get the mastery of the enemy and so add to their own good fortune and happiness. Or tell me, why does Homer praise Agamemnon by calling him 'both a good king and a mighty warrior'? Doesn't 'mighty warrior' mean not merely a man who stands and fights bravely himself, but one who inspires the same fighting spirit in his whole army? And 'good king' — not merely a man who defends his own life gallantly, but one who is the source of happiness for everyone he rules? A man isn't chosen king so that he can take good care of himself, however nobly; he's chosen so that the people who chose him may find happiness through him. And why do men go to war at all, if not to make life better? Why do they elect generals, if not to have guides toward that goal? So the man who takes on the office is bound to provide, for the people who elected him, the very thing they elected him to provide. It would be hard to find a nobler ambition than that — or anything more shameful than its opposite."
That was how he handled the question, what is the virtue of a good leader? — and by stripping away everything superficial, he laid bare the kernel of the matter: the job of every leader is to make the people he leads happy.
The following conversation I can also vouch for — with a young man who had just been elected hipparch, commander of the cavalry.
"Can you tell us, young man, what made you want the cavalry command?" Socrates asked. "What were you after? Surely not just the honor of riding at the head of the knights — even the mounted archers get that; they ride out in front of the commanders themselves."
"You're right."
"Nor just to be talked about, since even a madman can boast of that sort of fame."
"Right again."
"Then is this the explanation — you think you can improve the cavalry? Your aim is to hand it over to the state in better condition than you found it, and if the cavalry is ever called out, to do Athens some good at its head?"
"Exactly."
"And a noble ambition it is, upon my word — if you can pull it off. The command you've been given covers horses and riders, doesn't it?"
"It does."
"Come then, tell us first: how do you propose to improve the horses?"
"Ah, I don't think that will be any part of my business. Each trooper is personally responsible for the condition of his own horse."
"But suppose that when they muster, you find some have brought animals with bad feet or bad legs or some other weakness; others, beasts so underfed they can't keep up on the march; others, brutes so badly broken they won't hold their place in the ranks; and others, such desperate plungers they can't be put in the ranks at all. What becomes of your cavalry then? How will you charge at the head of a troop like that and win glory for the state?"
"You're right. I'll look after the horses as well as I possibly can."
"And won't you take the men in hand too?"
"I will."
"The first thing will be to make them expert at mounting their horses?"
"Certainly — that way, if a man is thrown, he'll have a better chance of saving himself."
"And when it comes to the hazard of a real engagement, what then? Will you order the enemy down onto the sandy ground where you're used to drilling, or try beforehand to train your men on the kind of ground where battles are actually fought?"
"The second would be better, no doubt."
"And will you make it part of your duty to see that as many of your men as possible can aim and shoot from horseback?"
"That would be better too, certainly."
"And have you thought about how to whet your troopers' courage — how to kindle in them a fighting fury against the enemy? Those are the things that make stout hearts stouter."
"If I haven't until now, I'll try to make up for lost time."
"And have you troubled your head at all about how to make your men obey you? Because without that, all your horses and troopers, however brave and strong, are worth nothing."
"That's true. But what's the best way to bring them to it, Socrates?"
"I suppose you know that in any business whatever, people most willingly follow the lead of whoever they consider the expert. In sickness, they obey the man they think the best doctor; on a voyage, the best pilot; on a farm, the best farmer — and so on."
"Yes, certainly."
"Then in cavalry matters too, we may reasonably expect that the man who is seen to know his business best will command the readiest obedience."
"So if I can show my troopers that I'm better than any of them, will that be enough to win their obedience?"
"Yes — if along with it you teach them that obeying you means more glory and surer safety for themselves."
"And how am I to teach them that?"
"Upon my word! How are you to teach them that? Far more easily, I should think, than if you had to teach them that bad things are better than good ones, and more profitable besides."
"You mean that a cavalry commander, on top of his other qualifications, needs command of speech and argument?"
"Did you imagine he was to command in silence? Has it never occurred to you that everything custom requires us to learn — the noblest things we know, the very knowledge that teaches us how to live — we learned through speech and reason? That whatever other noble learning a man acquires, he acquires it by that same reason? That the best teachers are the ones with the freest command of thought and language, and the men who best understand the most serious matters are the most brilliant speakers about them? Or notice this: whenever this city of ours fits out a chorus — like the one it sends to Delos — nothing from any other quarter of the world can compete with it, and no other state can gather such a flower of manhood as Athens."
"That's true."
"And yet it isn't sweetness of voice that sets the Athenians apart from everyone else, or size or strength of body. It's ambition — the love of honor, which more than anything puts a keen edge on the spirit in pursuit of whatever is beautiful and held in high esteem."
"That's true too."
"Then don't you think that if a man devoted himself to our cavalry the same way, we would leave the rest of the world far behind — in the furnishing of arms and horses, in discipline of array, in readiness to face danger against the enemy — if only our men could be persuaded that doing so would bring them honor and distinction?"
"It stands to reason."
"Then don't hesitate. Try to guide your men onto that road. You'll profit by it yourself, and so, through you, will your fellow citizens."
"I will certainly try," he answered.
Another time, seeing Nicomachides on his way back from the elections, he asked him, "Who were elected generals, Nicomachides?"
"Isn't it just like them, these Athenians?" he said. "Just like them, I tell you! They don't elect me — me, who have worn myself out with military service ever since my name first went on the muster-roll, as captain, as colonel, with all these wounds from the enemy to show for it" — and here, suiting the action to the word, he bared his arms and displayed the scars of old wounds — "no, they pass over me and elect Antisthenes! A man who has never served a day in the infantry, who never did one brilliant thing in the cavalry that I ever heard of, and who has no science at all, as far as I can tell, except piling up money."
"Well, isn't that one point in his favor?" Socrates returned. "He ought to be able to keep the troops supplied."
"Merchants are good at collecting stores," said Nicomachides. "It doesn't follow that a merchant can command an army."
"But Antisthenes hates to lose," Socrates rejoined. "He insists on winning, and that's a very necessary quality in a general. Haven't you noticed that every time he has sponsored a chorus, that chorus has won?"
"Good heavens, yes — but there's a wide difference between standing at the head of a band of singers and dancers and standing at the head of a troop of soldiers."
"And yet Antisthenes has no practical skill in singing or in training a chorus — he simply had the knack of finding the best experts in both."
"So on campaign, by the same reasoning, he'll find experts too — some to marshal the troops for him and others to fight his battles?"
"Just so. And if in military matters he shows the same skill at picking out the best men that he has shown in chorus matters, he'll very likely carry off the victory there as well. He spent freely to win a chorus competition with a single tribe behind him; he'll presumably spend more freely to win a war with the whole state behind him."
"Do you really mean, Socrates, that the same man who manages a good chorus can serve as commander-in-chief?"
"I mean this: whatever a man is put in charge of — a household, a city, an army — if he knows what it needs and has the skill to provide it, he will be a good chief and director of it."
"Honestly, Socrates," said Nicomachides, "I never expected to hear you say that a good housekeeper and manager of an estate would make a good general."
"Come then, let's examine the duties of each and settle whether they're the same or different."
"Let's."
"Well, isn't it a duty common to both to make the people under them prompt to obey orders?"
"Certainly."
"And to assign each task to the people best qualified to perform it?"
"That belongs to both alike," he answered.
"And punishing the bad and rewarding the good — that belongs to both too, I think?"
"Decidedly."
"And winning the goodwill of their subordinates — surely that's the noble ambition of both?"
"That too."
"And is it in the interest of both alike to attract supporters and allies?"
"Beyond a doubt."
"And doesn't it closely concern them both to be good guardians of what's in their charge?"
"Very much so."
"Then it concerns them both equally to be painstaking, and to spare no labor in everything they do?"
"Yes — all these duties belong to both alike. But the parallel ends when it comes to actual fighting."
"Yet both are certain to meet with enemies?"
"No doubt about that."
"And isn't it in the interest of both to get the upper hand of those enemies?"
"Certainly. But you're leaving something out: what good will organization and the art of management be when it comes to actual fighting?"
"That is exactly where they'll be of most use," said Socrates. "The good manager knows that nothing pays so well as victory in battle, and nothing is so ruinous and expensive as defeat. So he will eagerly seek out and provide everything that makes for victory, and painstakingly discover and guard against everything that leads to defeat. When he sees his forces ready and ripe for victory, he will fight with all his energy — and, just as important, while they are not yet ready, he will be careful not to fight. Don't look down on men with a genius for management, Nicomachides. Handling private business differs from handling the business of the state only in scale. In every other respect the parallel holds, and above all in this: neither can be done without human beings, and the human beings who conduct private affairs and public affairs are of one and the same type. The men who prosper in either sphere are those who know the secret of dealing with people; the men who lack it strike a false note in both."
It is worth setting down here a conversation Socrates had with Pericles — the son of the great statesman Pericles, not the father himself. Socrates opened it:
"I must tell you, Pericles, I'm expecting great things for our military affairs once you're elected general. Athens' standing should rise, and we should get the upper hand over our enemies."
"I wish with all my heart it would turn out as you say, Socrates," Pericles replied, "but how any of that is supposed to happen, I honestly can't see."
"Then shall we talk it through together," Socrates continued, "weigh the arguments on both sides, and see how far it's actually possible?"
"By all means."
"Well then, you know that in sheer numbers the Athenians are no smaller a people than the Boeotians?"
"Yes, I'm aware of that."
"And do you think the Boeotians could field a finer, healthier pick of men than Athens could?"
"I think we'd hold our own there too."
"And which of the two would you call the more united people — the friendlier among themselves?"
"The Athenians, I'd say. Whole sections of Boeotia resent the way Thebes runs things for its own benefit, and they bear that city ill will. At Athens I see nothing of the kind."
"Add this, too: no people is hungrier for honor or prouder in spirit — and those are no weak spurs. They'll drive even a sluggish nature to risk everything for glory's sake and for country."
"There's not much fault to find with Athenians on that score either."
"And if we turn to the great deeds of our ancestors, no people on earth has inherited a richer store of them than we have — memories that stir so many of us to take excellence seriously and to prove ourselves, in our turn, as brave as our fathers were."
"All of that is perfectly true, Socrates. But have you noticed that ever since the disaster at Lebadeia, where Tolmides lost his thousand men, and the one at Delium under Hippocrates, everything has been reversed? Athens' standing against the Boeotians has sunk, and the confidence of Thebes against Athens has swelled to match. The Boeotians, who in the old days wouldn't risk a battle with Athenians even on their own soil unless they had the Spartans and the rest of the Peloponnesians backing them up, now threaten to invade Attica all by themselves. And the Athenians, who used to ravage Boeotia at will whenever the Boeotians stood alone, are now afraid the Boeotians may one day come and ravage Attica."
"Yes," said Socrates, "I see that's how things stand. But it seems to me the city was never more manageable, never so ripe for a really good leader, than it is today. Boldness breeds carelessness, slackness, and disobedience; fear makes people attentive, obedient, and orderly. You can see the proof of that aboard ship. As long as the weather is calm and there's nothing to fear, the crew is a picture of disorder. But the moment a storm threatens or an enemy comes in sight, the scene changes: not only is every order obeyed, but the sailors fall silent and wait for the next signal like a chorus with its eyes on the leader."
"Well," said Pericles, "granted that now is the moment when they'd actually obey — then it's high time to talk about how we rekindle the old fire in them: the longing for the old-fashioned courage, the glory, the prosperity of the days gone by."
"Well," Socrates went on, "if we wanted them to reclaim some material wealth that others now hold, the best way to spur them on would be to show them it was their ancestors' property and theirs by right. Since what we actually want is for them to strive for first place in excellence, we have to show them that this leadership, joined with virtue, is their oldest inheritance — theirs beyond any other people's — and that if they pursue it in earnest they'll soon surpass the world."
"How do we teach them that?"
"By reminding them, I think, of what they already carry in their minds: that the oldest of our ancestors whose names have come down to us were also the bravest of heroes."
"You mean the judgment of the gods that Cecrops and his court were chosen to decide, because of their virtue?"
"That, yes, and the birth and rearing of Erechtheus, and the war fought in his day to hold back invasion from the whole neighboring continent; and the war against the Peloponnesians in the days of the Heraclidae, the descendants of Heracles; and all the battles fought in Theseus' time. In every one of them, our ancestors showed themselves the best men of their age. And if you like, we can come down to later times, to what their descendants did — men not so far removed from ourselves — in the struggle against the masters of Asia, and of Europe too as far as Macedonia: a power with resources and weapons beyond anything that had come before, with the mightiest deeds to its name. The Athenians met it partly on their own and partly sharing the honors with the Peloponnesians, by land and by sea. Those men were heroes too, and tradition says they far outshone the peoples of their day."
"So the story of their heroism runs."
"And that is why, through all the upheavals and migrations that have swept over Greece wave after wave, they alone kept their own land, unmoved — so that other peoples routinely turned to Athens as a court of appeal in disputes over rights, or fled to her as a harbor of refuge from oppressors."
"And the wonder to me, Socrates," said Pericles, "is how our city ever came to decline from that."
"I think we're the victims of our own success. Like an athlete whose easy dominance in the arena lulls him into slacking off until he finally loses to weaker opponents, we Athenians, at the height of our superiority, neglected ourselves and went soft."
"Then what should we do now to recover the old virtue?"
"There's no mystery about it, I think. We can rediscover our forefathers' institutions and practice them with something like their exactness — in which case we may well match their success. Or we can imitate the people who lead the field today, adopt their way of life, and, if we live by it as strictly as they do, be at least their equals — or, if we follow it more conscientiously still, their betters."
"You seem to be saying," Pericles answered, "that the spirit of brave and beautiful manhood has simply flown from our city. When will Athenians revere their elders the way the Spartans do — Athenians, who start practicing contempt for gray hairs on their own fathers? When will they train their bodies like Spartans — when they not only neglect fitness themselves but sneer at those who care about it? When will they obey their magistrates like Spartans — when they take actual pride in despising authority? When will they be united like Spartans — when instead of working together for common interests they tear at each other's reputations, envy each other more than they envy the rest of mankind, quarrel in private and in public more than any people alive, drag each other endlessly through the courts, and would rather turn a profit on a neighbor's trouble than lend a hand? They treat the city's business like some foreign country's — a bone to fight over — and rejoice in nothing so much as having the means to fight over it. From all this the state breeds blindness and cowardice, and the citizens' hearts fill with such hatred and hostility toward each other that I often shudder to think some disaster will fall on the city too great for her to bear."
"Don't," Socrates replied, "please don't let yourself believe the Athenians are sick beyond curing. Don't you see how disciplined they are in everything to do with the fleet? How promptly and precisely they obey the officials at the athletic games? How they follow their trainers in the choruses better than anyone alive?"
"Yes — and that's the wonder of it," he answered. "All those people obey their leaders; but our heavy infantry and our cavalry, supposedly the pick of the citizens for manly excellence, are the most undisciplined of all."
"Well," said Socrates, "the council that sits on the Areopagus — isn't it made up of men of proven character?"
"Certainly."
"Can you name any body, judicial or executive, that tries cases or conducts business with more honor, stricter legality, greater dignity, or fairer justice?"
"No, I have no complaint there."
"Then we shouldn't despair, as if all sense of order and discipline had died out of our countrymen."
"And yet," he answered, "not to keep harping on one string — in military service, where sobriety, order, and discipline are needed if they're needed anywhere, none of these things gets any attention at all."
"Maybe," said Socrates, "because there they're commanded by the men who know least. Take harpists, chorus performers, dancers: have you noticed that nobody ever dreams of leading them without knowing the art? The same goes for wrestlers and pancratiasts, the all-in fighters. All those leaders can tell you where they learned the skill they preside over — but most of our generals are amateurs, improvising as they go. Now, I don't for a moment suppose you're that sort. I believe you could account for your schooling in generalship as readily as your schooling in wrestling. You've preserved your father's rules of strategy at first hand, and you've collected plenty more from every quarter where a future general could pick up anything useful. I'm sure, too, that you take pains never to be ignorant, even unknowingly, of anything that will serve you in so high an office — and that wherever you catch yourself lacking, you go to the people who know, sparing neither gifts nor thanks, so their knowledge can fill your gaps and their help can be counted on."
"I'm not blind, Socrates," said Pericles. "You don't say all this because you think I actually do these things. You're teaching me that a man who means to be a general must do them. And I grant every word."
Socrates went on: "Have you ever noticed, Pericles, that a great mountain barrier runs along the front of our country toward Boeotia, like a rampart — cut only by narrow, steep passes, the sole roads into the heart of Attica, which sits ringed by natural fortresses?"
"Certainly I have."
"And have you heard of the Mysians and Pisidians in the Great King's territory — how they hold their mountain strongholds with light arms, sweep down to raid and ravage the king's land, and keep their own freedom?"
"Yes, I know of them."
"Then don't you think a corps of young, able-bodied Athenians, equipped with lighter arms and holding that mountain rampart of ours, would be a thorn in the enemy's side and a splendid bulwark for our own countryside?"
"I think all of these would be useful measures, Socrates, decidedly."
"Then if they please you," Socrates replied, "try, best of men, to make them real. Whatever part of them you carry out will be an honor to you and a blessing to the state; and wherever you fall short, you'll do no harm to the city and no discredit to yourself."
Glaucon, the son of Ariston, had set his heart so fiercely on leading the state that nothing could stop him from giving public speeches — though he was not yet twenty. His friends and relatives tried and failed to keep him from making himself ridiculous and getting hauled down from the speaker's platform. The one man who succeeded was Socrates, who took a kindly interest in the young man for the sake of Charmides, his uncle, and of Plato, his brother. Here is how it happened. Socrates ran into him, and first, to get him to listen at all, held him with an opening like this:
"Ah, Glaucon — so you've decided to become the leading man of the state?"
"I have, Socrates."
"And what a noble ambition, if anything human deserves the name! Succeed, and you'll be able to get whatever you desire; you'll be in a position to help your friends; you'll raise up your father's house and exalt your fatherland; you'll make a name for yourself first in the city, then throughout Greece, and perhaps, like Themistocles, even among the barbarians. Wherever you go, all eyes will be on you."
Glaucon's heart swelled as he drank this in, and he gladly stayed to listen.
Presently Socrates continued: "Then this much is clear, isn't it, Glaucon — since you want the city's honors, you'll have to benefit the city?"
"Undoubtedly."
"Then by all that's sacred, don't keep us in the dark. Tell us: how do you propose to benefit the state first? Where will you begin?"
Glaucon sat silent, as if he were considering for the very first time where he would begin. So Socrates went on: "I imagine, if you wanted to improve a friend's estate, you'd try to make it wealthier. Will you try the same with the state — to make it wealthier?"
"Absolutely."
"And the state grows wealthier as its revenues increase?"
"That seems likely, at any rate."
"Then tell us, please: what are the state's revenues at present, and what do they come from, and how large are they? No doubt you've gone into the question carefully, so that if any source runs dry you can make up the shortfall, and if any has been neglected you can restore it."
"To tell the truth," said Glaucon, "those are matters I haven't really gone into."
"Never mind," he said, "if you've skipped that point. Just run through the expenditures for us. Obviously you plan to cut the unnecessary ones."
"Well — no. Honestly, I haven't had time to look into that side of it yet either."
"Then we'll postpone the project of making the state wealthier. Without knowing what goes out and what comes in, there's obviously no way to handle it seriously."
"But Socrates," Glaucon put in, "it's also possible to enrich the state out of its enemies' pockets!"
"Very much so," Socrates answered, "provided you beat them. But if you're beaten, it's also possible to lose what you already have."
"True enough."
"And therefore," Socrates went on, "before deciding whom to make war on, a statesman must know the strength of his own city and the strength of the enemy — so that if his side is the stronger, he can throw his advice behind the war, and if it's the weaker, he can urge caution."
"You're right."
"Then would you list for us the land and naval forces of Athens first, and then those of our opponents?"
"Forgive me — I couldn't recite them off the top of my head."
"If you have them written down somewhere," Socrates added, "do fetch them. I can't tell you how eager I am to hear."
"No," he said. "To be honest, I haven't got them written down either."
"Then we'll hold off on advising war or peace — in your maiden speech, at any rate. The questions are enormous, and you're just starting out; I quite understand you haven't gotten through them yet. But the defense of the country — that, I'm sure, you've studied. You know exactly how many forts and outposts are worth keeping and how many aren't, which garrisons are strong enough and which are undermanned; and you'll argue for reinforcing the useful outposts and scrapping the superfluous ones."
"Scrap them all — that's my advice," said Glaucon. "For all the good they do! Defenses, indeed — kept up so well that the property of the countryside gets stolen anyway."
"But if you scrap the outposts," Socrates asked, "won't something worse follow? Won't any thug who likes be free to plunder openly? And by the way — is this judgment based on personal inspection? Have you gone out and examined the defenses yourself? How do you know they're as badly kept as you say?"
"I'm guessing that they are."
"Then shall we defer our advice on this too, until we've gotten past guessing? It will be time enough when we know the facts."
"Perhaps that would be better," Glaucon replied.
"Then there are the silver mines. You haven't visited those in person, I know, so you can't say why they produce less than they used to."
"No — I've never been out there."
"No, indeed. Heaven help us, it's an unhealthy district, by all accounts — so when the moment comes for advice on that subject, you'll have your excuse ready."
"Now you're making fun of me," Glaucon answered.
"But here's a point I'm sure you haven't neglected. No, this one you'll have gone into thoroughly, and you can tell us: how long can the grain grown in our own countryside feed the city? How much does the city need for a single year? That way it can never run short of this basic necessity without your knowing, and with your full command of the facts you'll be able to advise on a truly vital question — to the aid, maybe even the rescue, of your country."
"It's a colossal business," Glaucon answered, "if I'm expected to attend to all these details."
"On the other hand," said Socrates, "a man can't even run his own household well without knowing, first, what it needs, and then taking pains to supply it item by item. Now, this city consists of more than ten thousand households, and it's not easy to look after so many at once — so why didn't you start by practicing on one of them, and try to build up your own uncle's? It could use the help. If your strength holds for that one case, you can take on more; but if you can't relieve one household, how could you possibly hope to manage thousands? If a man can't carry fifty pounds, it's absurd for him to try to carry a hundred."
"Oh, I'd be glad enough to help my uncle's house," said Glaucon, "if only my uncle would be persuaded to listen to me."
"So," said Socrates, "you can't persuade your uncle — and you imagine you'll be able to make the whole Athenian people, uncle included, obey you? Be careful, Glaucon, that in your thirst for glory and reputation you don't end up with the opposite. Don't you see how dangerous it is to say or do things beyond the range of your knowledge? Think of the people you know whose talk or conduct plainly overshoots what they understand: do they earn more praise for it, or more blame? Are they admired, or despised? Then think of the people who do know what they're saying and doing, and I think you'll find that in every field, the ones who win reputation and admiration come from the ranks of the most knowledgeable, while the disreputable, the mean, and the contemptible rise out of some depth of ignorance and dullness. So if reputation and admiration as a statesman is what you thirst for, make sure of one accomplishment above all: knowledge, as thorough as you can get, of the work you mean to do. If you enter public life with that to set you apart from everyone else, I wouldn't be at all surprised if you reached your ambition quite easily."
Charmides, the son of Glaucon, was, as Socrates could see, a man of real ability and influence — far more capable, in fact, than most of the people active in politics at the time. But he was also a man who shrank from speaking before the people or taking any hand in the business of the state. So Socrates put this to him:
"Tell me, Charmides — suppose a man were good enough to win a victory in the great games and take the crown, bringing honor to himself and making his country more glorious throughout Greece, and yet he refused to compete. What kind of person would you call him?"
"Soft and cowardly, obviously," he answered.
"And if another man had it in him, by devoting himself to public affairs, to lift up his city and win honor for himself in the process, and yet he hesitated and hung back — wouldn't it be fair to call him a coward too?"
"Maybe," he said. "But why are you asking me these questions?"
"Because," Socrates replied, "I think you have exactly that power, and yet you hesitate to take up work that you are bound to share in, if only because you are a citizen."
"And where have you detected this power of mine," said Charmides, "that you pass so harsh a sentence on me?"
"In those gatherings where you meet the men who run the city's politics," said Socrates. "I've watched: whenever they consult you on anything, you always have good advice to give, and whenever they make a mistake, you put your finger on the weak spot at once."
"Talking things over in private is one thing, Socrates," said Charmides. "Fighting it out in a packed assembly is another."
"And yet a man who can count," said Socrates, "counts just as well in a crowd as he does sitting alone; and it's the best harp player in private who wins the prize in public."
"But surely you see," said Charmides, "that shyness and stage fright are planted deep in human nature — and they grip us far harder in a crowd than among our close friends."
"Yes — and that's exactly what I'm determined to teach you," said Socrates. "You feel no such shyness before the wisest and most powerful men, yet you're ashamed to open your mouth in front of the weakest and dullest. Who is it among them that overawes you? The fullers? The cobblers? The carpenters, the coppersmiths, the merchants, the farmers, the traders in the marketplace calculating how to buy cheap and sell dear? Because those are the individual atoms the Popular Assembly is made of. How is your behavior any different from a champion athlete quailing before a crowd of amateurs? You can argue comfortably with the leading statesmen of the city — some of whom look down on you — and you stand head and shoulders above the practiced public speakers; and yet the moment you face a set of people who have never given politics a thought in their lives, and who certainly never dreamed of looking down on you, you're afraid to open your mouth for terror of being laughed at."
"Well, you'll admit," he answered, "that the Popular Assembly does quite often laugh at sound argument."
"So do the others," said Socrates. "And that's precisely what astonishes me: you handle those grand people easily enough when they turn to mockery, and yet you've convinced yourself you can't stand up to a crowd of ordinary men. My good friend, don't be ignorant of yourself! Don't fall into the commonest mistake there is — the mistake of people who rush off to investigate everyone else's business and never turn to examine their own. Don't shirk that duty like a coward. Brace yourself to pay real attention to who you are; and as for public affairs, if there is any way they can be improved through you, don't neglect them. When politics goes well, it isn't only the mass of your fellow citizens who profit — it's your personal friends, and, not least, yourself."
Once Aristippus set out to cross-examine Socrates the way Socrates had once cross-examined him. Socrates, wanting the discussion to benefit the people around him, answered not like a debater guarding his argument against tricks, but like a man convinced that nothing matters more than doing what is right.
Aristippus asked him whether he knew of anything good. His plan was this: if Socrates said yes and named some particular good — food, drink, money, health, strength, courage — Aristippus would show that the thing named was sometimes bad. But Socrates knew that when something troubles us, what we want is whatever will end the trouble, and he answered in exactly the best way.
"Are you asking me," he said, "whether I know something good for fever?"
"No," he replied, "that's not my question."
"For eye inflammation, then?"
"No, not that either."
"For hunger?"
"No, not for hunger."
"Well," said Socrates, "if you're asking me whether I know of any good thing that is good for nothing, I don't know of it — and I don't want to."
Aristippus came back at him and asked whether he knew of anything beautiful.
"Yes," he answered, "many things."
"Are they all like one another?"
"On the contrary — often as unlike as they could possibly be."
"Then how can something be beautiful," he asked, "when it's unlike the beautiful?"
"Easily," said Socrates. "A man who's a beautiful runner can be quite unlike a man who's a beautiful boxer; a shield, which is a beautiful thing for defense, is utterly unlike a javelin, which is a beautiful thing for swift, sure throwing."
"Your answers are no better now," said Aristippus, "than when I asked whether you knew anything good. They're cut from the same cloth."
"And so they should be," said Socrates. "Do you imagine that good is one thing and beautiful another? Don't you know that all things are beautiful and good relative to the same standard? Virtue, to start with, isn't good by one standard and beautiful by another. Human beings are called 'beautiful and good' in the same sense and by the same standard; men's bodies are seen to be beautiful and good by the same measure; and in general everything people use is considered beautiful and good by the same test — namely, what it is useful for."
"Then I suppose," said Aristippus, "even a dung basket is a beautiful thing?"
"Certainly," he answered, "and a golden spear an ugly one — if for their respective purposes the basket is well made and the spear badly."
"Are you telling me the same things can be both beautiful and ugly?"
"Of course — and by the same reasoning, both good and bad. What's good for hunger is often bad for fever, and what's good for fever bad for hunger; what's beautiful for wrestling is often ugly for running. Everything is good and beautiful when it's well suited to its purpose, and bad and ugly when it's ill suited."
In the same way, when he argued about houses — that the same house must be at once beautiful and useful — I couldn't help feeling he was giving a fine lesson in how a house ought to be built. He approached it like this:
"If you mean to build the perfect house, shouldn't you plan to make it as pleasant and as useful to live in as possible?" And once that was admitted: "It's pleasant to have the house cool in summer and warm in winter, isn't it?" And when that was granted too: "Now, in a house facing south, the winter sun slants in under the porch, while in summer, when it passes right overhead, the roof gives us welcome shade. If that's what we want, then we should build the south side higher, to catch the winter sun, and the north side lower, to keep out the cold winds. To put it in a word: the pleasantest and most beautiful home is the one where the owner can find the most agreeable retreat in every season and store his belongings in the greatest safety."
Paintings and ornamental moldings, he said, rob you of more pleasure than they give.
The best site for a temple or an altar, he maintained, was a spot visible from far off and untrodden by human feet: it does the worshipper good to lift up his eyes from a distance and offer his prayer, and good to approach the holy place clean and undefiled.
Asked once whether courage could be taught or came by nature, he answered: "I think that just as one body is naturally stronger than another for hard work, so one soul is naturally tougher than another in the face of danger — I certainly notice that people raised under the same laws and customs differ widely in daring. But I believe that every nature can be strengthened toward courage by learning and practice. It's obvious that Scythians and Thracians wouldn't dare take up shield and spear and fight Spartans; and it's just as obvious that Spartans would refuse to face Thracians armed only with light shields and javelins, or Scythians with nothing but bows and arrows. And as far as I can see, the same holds everywhere: men differ from one another by nature, but they improve by practice and attention. Which makes one thing clear — everyone, quick-witted or slow, should learn and practice the things he wants to excel in."
Between wisdom and self-control he drew no line. If a man could recognize the things that are beautiful and good well enough to live by them, and knew the shameful things well enough to avoid them, Socrates judged him wise and self-controlled at once.
When he was pressed further — did he consider people wise and self-controlled who know what is right but don't do it? — he answered: "No more than I consider them unwise and out of control. Everyone, I take it, chooses from the options open to him whatever he thinks serves his interest best, and then does it. So I hold that people who act wrongly and crookedly are neither wise nor self-controlled."
He said, too, that justice, and every other virtue, is wisdom. Just actions, and all actions done with virtue, are beautiful and good; people who know these things will never choose anything else in their place, and people who don't know them cannot do them — even if they try, they miss the mark and fail. So the wise do what is beautiful and good, and the unwise cannot; even when they try, they fail. And since all just actions, and all beautiful and good actions generally, are done with virtue, it's clear that justice and every other virtue is wisdom.
Madness, he maintained, was the opposite of wisdom — though he didn't count simple ignorance as madness. What came very near madness, he argued, was for a man not to know himself: to imagine and assume he knows what he doesn't know. Most people, of course, talk differently: if a man is completely astray about something most of mankind knows nothing about, they don't call him mad; but the same derangement about matters of common knowledge they do call madness. If a man thinks himself too tall to walk through a gate in the Long Wall without stooping, or strong enough to lift a house, or attempts any other plain impossibility, they say he's insane; but if his delusions are confined to small matters, popular opinion doesn't call him mad at all. In fact, just as ordinary speech reserves the word "passion" for strong desire, so it reserves the word "madness" for derangement on a grand scale.
Asked what envy was, he found it to be a certain kind of pain — not the sorrow we feel at a friend's misfortune or an enemy's success; that isn't envy. "Envy," he said, "is felt only by people who are annoyed at the successes of their friends." When someone expressed astonishment that anyone who liked another person could be pained at his doing well, he pointed to a common tendency: when a man is doing badly, people's sympathies are stirred and they rush to help him; but when fortune smiles on him, they somehow feel hurt. "I don't say this could happen to a thoughtful person," he added, "but it's not an uncommon condition in a silly mind."
Asked what leisure was, he said: "I find that most men are always doing something. The dice player, the gambler, the clown — they're all doing something, and they all have leisure, because they're free to turn and do something better. But nobody is at leisure to turn from better to worse; and if he turns that way, having no leisure for it, he is simply doing badly."
Kings and rulers, he said, are not the men who merely hold the scepter, or get elected by any passers-by, or drawn by lot, or who seize power by force or fraud — but the men who know how to rule. Once someone granted that it's the ruler's job to command what ought to be done and the job of the ruled to obey, he would point out example after example: on a ship, the one who rules is the man who knows — the captain — and the shipowner and everyone else on board obey him as the expert. In farming, the landowners obey the one who knows; in sickness, the patients; in athletic training, the young men in training. In general, anyone with something at stake that needs care will attend to it himself, if he thinks he has the knowledge; and if he doesn't trust his own expertise, he will eagerly obey any expert on hand — or even send for one from a distance — and follow that expert's guidance, doing what he's told.
And in the art of spinning wool, he liked to point out, women rule men — because women know the art and men don't.
If anyone objected that a tyrant has the option of not listening to good advice, he would answer: "How does he have that option, with a penalty hanging over everyone who disobeys wise counsel? In whatever matter he disobeys good advice, he will go wrong, I presume — and going wrong, he will pay for it." And to the suggestion that the tyrant could simply have the wise man killed: "Do you think a man who destroys his best ally gets off free, or suffers only some slight, passing loss? Is that the way to save himself, do you think — or the fastest way to his own destruction?"
When someone asked him what the best pursuit for a man was, he answered: "Doing well." Asked next whether he counted good luck a pursuit, he said: "Quite the opposite — luck and doing are poles apart, in my view. To stumble into something desirable without seeking it, I call good luck; to do a thing well through learning and practice, I call doing well — and the people who make that the serious business of their lives seem to me to be doing well indeed."
The best men and the dearest to God, he went on, are those who do their work well — in farming, the work of the farm; in medicine, the work of healing; in politics, the work of the state. A man who does nothing well, he added, is good for nothing and dear to no god.
Then again, whenever chance brought him into conversation with someone who possessed an art and practiced it for a living, he never failed to be useful to that kind of person too. Stepping one day into the studio of Parrhasius the painter, he fell into conversation with him.
"Parrhasius," he said, "painting is a representation of visible things, isn't it? With your colors you painters copy and reproduce, as closely as you can, hollows and heights, dark and light, hard and soft, rough and smooth, the freshness of youth and the wrinkles of age — don't you?"
"That's right," he answered. "So we do."
"And when you're portraying ideal beauty, since it isn't easy to find any one human being without a flaw, you gather from many models the most beautiful features of each, and so make your figures beautiful throughout?"
"Yes, that's how we work."
"But wait," Socrates went on. "Do you also capture the character of the soul — the thing that is most winning, most sweet, most lovable, most longed-for, most desirable? Or can't that be depicted at all?"
"How could it be, Socrates?" he answered. "It has no proportion, no color, none of the qualities you just listed — it isn't even visible."
"Well — does a person's look ever show kindness toward someone, or hatred?"
"I'd say it does."
"Then that much, at least, can be captured in the eyes?"
"Certainly."
"And do people wear the same expression over their friends' good fortune as over their misfortune?"
"By no means. Over good fortune the face is radiant; over bad, clouded."
"So these looks, too, can be represented?"
"Decidedly."
"And more than that: nobility and generosity, meanness and servility, self-control and good sense, insolence and vulgarity — they show through a person's face and posture, whether he's standing still or moving, don't they, as if through a chink in a wall?"
"You're right."
"Then these can be imitated too?"
"No doubt."
"And which do you think is the pleasanter face to look at — one stamped with a beautiful, good, lovable character, or one that bears the marks of what is ugly, bad, and hateful?"
"There's no comparison, Socrates."
Another time he went into the workshop of Cleiton the sculptor, and in the course of conversation said to him: "You have a gallery of handsome figures here, Cleiton — runners, wrestlers, boxers, all-in fighters. I can see that. But the quality that most draws the soul of the viewer through his eyes — the look of life — how do you produce that in your statues?"
Cleiton stood there puzzled and didn't answer at once, so Socrates went on: "Is it by modeling your work closely on living bodies that you make your statues appear alive?"
"No doubt it is," he answered.
"By faithfully copying how the parts of the body pull up or down with a pose — squeezed together or stretched apart, tensed or relaxed — that's how you make your statues look like real bodies, make them 'breathe,' as people say?"
"Exactly."
"And doesn't a faithful rendering of what a body in action is feeling give the viewer a particular pleasure?"
"I'd say so."
"Then the menace in the eyes of soldiers in battle ought to be copied, and the radiance of a victor in his moment of triumph imitated?"
"Absolutely."
"It seems, then, that the sculptor's job is to build into his form the workings of the soul as well."
Visiting Pistias the armor-maker, who showed him some finely made breastplates, Socrates exclaimed: "By Hera, Pistias, a splendid invention — the breastplate covers the parts of a man that need protecting, and still leaves his arms and hands free. But tell me," he added, "why do you charge more for your breastplates when they're no stronger and no more expensively made than other men's?"
"Because mine, Socrates," he answered, "are better proportioned."
"Proportioned! And how do you show that quality to a customer, to justify the higher price — by measure, or by weight? Because I assume you don't make them all identical, to one pattern — not if you make them fit, as of course you do."
"Fit! I most certainly do," he answered. "Take my word for it — a breastplate is no use without that."
"But aren't the wearers' bodies themselves," asked Socrates, "some well proportioned and some badly?"
"Decidedly so."
"Then how do you make a well-proportioned breastplate to fit a badly proportioned body?"
"The same way I make it fit," said Pistias. "What fits is well proportioned."
"So you're using 'well proportioned' not in an absolute sense," said Socrates, "but relative to the wearer — the way you might call a shield well proportioned for the man it suits, or a military cloak, and so on with everything else, in your way of speaking. But maybe there's another considerable advantage in this fitting?"
"Teach me, Socrates, if you have something in mind."
"A breastplate that fits galls the wearer less with its weight than one that doesn't. The ill-fitting one either drags on the shoulders like a dead weight or presses hard on some other part of the body, and turns into a nuisance and a torment. But the one that fits spreads its weight — some along the collarbone and shoulder blades, some over the shoulders and chest, some on the back and belly — until it feels less like a load to carry than like a second skin."
"You've named the very quality," said Pistias, "that I think gives my work its special value. Though I have to say, some customers want something else in a breastplate — decoration, or gold inlay."
"For all that," replied Socrates, "if they end up buying one that doesn't fit, all they own is a finely worked, gilded nuisance, it seems to me. But tell me this," he added. "The body doesn't hold one fixed position — it bends at one moment and straightens at the next. How can a breastplate that's exactly modeled to it ever fit?"
"It can't."
"You mean," Socrates continued, "that what fits is not the exactly modeled breastplate, but the one that doesn't gall the wearer in use?"
"You've hit the very point, Socrates," said Pistias. "You understand the matter exactly."
There was in the city at that time a beautiful woman named Theodota — the kind of woman who kept company with any admirer who could win her favor. One of the group happened to mention her, saying her beauty was beyond words. "Painters flock to her to paint her portrait," he added, "and she shows them as much of that beauty as decency allows." "Then we had better go and see her," said Socrates, "since you clearly can't grasp what's 'beyond words' by listening to words." "Then follow me right now," said the man who had brought her up, and off they went to visit Theodota. They found her posing for a painter, and stood watching. When the painter had finished, Socrates spoke up.
"Gentlemen, should we be thanking Theodota for showing us her beauty, or should she be thanking us for coming to look? Doesn't it work like this — if the showing profits her more, the debt is hers; but if the looking benefits us more, then we owe her."
Someone said that was a fair way to put it.
"Well then," he went on, "she gains our praise right now, and once we've spread her fame around, she'll gain even more. But we — the immediate effect on us is a longing to touch what we've seen; we'll leave with a sting in us, and once we're gone we'll ache with wanting. So it seems we're the ones doing her a service, and she's the one receiving our attentions."
"Goodness," said Theodota, "if that's how it works, then I'm the one in your debt for the viewing."
By now Socrates had noticed that she was expensively dressed, that her mother was there with her in clothes and attendance well beyond the ordinary, that her maids were many and good-looking and anything but neglected, and that the whole house was lavishly furnished. So he asked, "Tell me, Theodota, do you own a farm in the country?"
"Not I."
"A house, then, that brings in income?"
"No, no house either."
"Workshops, perhaps, with laborers?"
"No, no workshops."
"Then where does your living come from?"
"My friends are my living," she said, "when they choose to be kind to me."
"By heaven, Theodota, that's a fine property — a flock of friends is worth far more than a flock of sheep or goats or cattle. But tell me: do you leave it to luck whether a friend lands on your hand like a stray fly, or do you use some art of your own to draw them in?"
"How would I ever come up with an art for that?"
"Far more naturally than the spiders do, I promise you. You know how they hunt for their living — they weave those gossamer webs, and whatever tumbles in becomes dinner."
"So you're advising me to weave some kind of net?"
"Come now — you don't imagine you'll snare the noblest game there is, a lover, with no more craft than that? Look how many tricks it takes to bag a mere hare. Hares feed at night, so the hunter needs night dogs. At daybreak they scatter, so he needs a second pack of scent-hounds to work out which trail they took from their feeding ground to their beds. They're so fast they vanish in the open, so he needs yet another pack, fast dogs, to run them down by their tracks. And since some will slip past even those, he sets nets across the escape paths at the end of it all, so they tumble into the mesh and are caught."
"And what contraption like that is supposed to catch me my lovers?"
"Well — what if, instead of a dog, you had a man who would hunt up a wealthy admirer of beauty for you, find his haunts, and then scheme to drive him into your nets?"
"Nets? What nets do I have?"
"One, certainly — and a close-woven one at that: your own person. And inside it sits a soul that teaches you which looks please and which words charm; that tells you to welcome real devotion with a smile and shut the door on the insolent; to hurry to a friend's bedside when he's sick, and to share his joy openly when he's done something fine; and when a man truly cares for you, to give yourself to him heart and soul. As for loving — I'm sure you know how to love not just softly but devotedly, and to convince your friends of your affection not with pretty phrases but with acts."
"Honestly," said Theodota, "I use none of these devices."
"And yet it makes all the difference to approach a human being in the right and natural way. Force certainly won't catch a friend or keep one; kindness and pleasure are the only snares for that elusive animal, man — the only things that hold him fast."
"You're right."
"So, first: ask of your admirers only what they can grant without regretting it. Then repay them in the same spirit — dispensing your favors with the same economy. That's how you'll make friends whose love lasts longest and whose generosity never runs dry. And you'll please them best if you give only when they're hungry for the gift. Notice how even the sweetest food, offered before a man wants it, seems flat — and to a man already full, it's nearly sickening. But create hunger, and even plain fare tastes like honey."
"Then how do I create this hunger in my friends?"
"First, never offer or even hint at your delicacies while they're sated — wait until the fullness has passed and the want makes itself felt. Even then, hint at it only faintly: gracious conversation, the look of someone who would like to be kind — and then the vision withdraws — until the want is at its sharpest. The same gifts are worth far more at the moment of real desire than a moment before it."
"Oh, Socrates," said Theodota, "why aren't you here at my side, my partner in the hunt, helping me catch my friends and lovers?"
"I will be — if you can persuade me to come."
"And how do I persuade you?"
"You'll find a way," he said, "if you really need me."
"Then come visit me. Come often."
And Socrates, poking fun at his own lack of paying occupations, said, "Ah, Theodota, leisure is not a commodity I deal in much. I have a hundred affairs of my own, private and public, to keep me busy — and then there are my girlfriends, my dear friends, who won't leave me alone day or night, forever studying love-charms and incantations at my lips."
"You really know about those things, Socrates?"
"Of course. Why else do you suppose Apollodorus here and Antisthenes never leave my side? Why have Cebes and Simmias come all the way from Thebes to stay with me? Believe me, that doesn't happen without a good many love-charms and incantations and magic wheels."
"Then lend me your magic wheel — I'll spin it first for you."
"Ah, but I don't want to be drawn to you," he said. "I want you to come to me."
"Then I'll come. Only — will you be at home to me?"
"Yes, I'll welcome you — unless someone dearer still has me engaged, and I have to be 'not at home.'"
Noticing that one of his companions, a young man named Epigenes, was in poor physical condition, he said, "You have the body of a man who never trains, Epigenes."
"Well, I'm a private citizen, not an athlete in training."
"You are exactly as much in training," said Socrates, "as any man who ever competed at Olympia — unless you consider the contest for life itself, the one the Athenians will hold against their enemies whenever the day comes, a small matter. And it's no small number of men who die in the dangers of war because their bodies failed them, or who save their lives shamefully. Many are taken prisoner for the same reason, and if that's their luck, spend the rest of their days in slavery; or they land in desperate straits, pay out ransom worth more than everything they own, and drag through the rest of life destitute of bare necessities. Many earn a coward's reputation when the real culprit was an unfit body. Do you shrug off these penalties of bad condition? Do you think you'd bear them lightly? I imagine what a man goes through to keep himself fit is far lighter — far pleasanter, even — by comparison. Or is it your position that bad condition is healthier and generally more useful than good? Do you sneer at everything a sound body brings? Because everything that follows from fitness is the opposite of what follows from neglect. The fit man is healthy and strong. Many a man has come through the ordeal of war safely on that account alone, and walked through all its horrors with his dignity intact. Many have rescued friends with nothing else to lean on, or done real service to their country and been judged worthy of gratitude for it — winning great reputation and the highest honors the state can give, living out the rest of their lives the happier and the brighter for it, and leaving their children a better start in life.
"Just because our city doesn't require military training in public is no reason to neglect it in private — it's a reason to work at it all the harder. You can be sure there is no contest of any kind, and no undertaking whatsoever, in which you'll be worse off for having your body well prepared. Everything men do, the body is a help in doing. And in every use we make of it, it matters enormously that it be in the best possible condition. Even where you'd think the body counted least — in thinking — who doesn't know the terrible stumbles men make because their health is bad? Forgetfulness, despondency, irritability, madness — they take advantage of poor condition to assault the mind so violently that they can drive out everything a man knows. But the man in good bodily shape has ample security. He runs no such risk of breaking down; his fitness works toward the very opposite of what neglect produces — and what wouldn't a sensible man endure for results like those? Besides, it's a disgrace for a man to grow old through sheer neglect before ever seeing what he might have become with his body at its full strength and beauty. And that sight is denied to the man who neglects himself — for it does not come of its own accord."
Once, when a man was furious because he had said good day to a passer-by and gotten no greeting back, Socrates said, "That's ridiculous. If you'd run into a man with a wretched body, you wouldn't be angry — but you stumble on a soul in a somewhat boorish state, and that offends you."
To another man who complained that he took no pleasure in eating, he said, "Acumenus has a good prescription for that." "What is it?" the man asked. "Stop eating," he said. "Once you do, life will be pleasanter, cheaper, and healthier."
Someone else grumbled that the drinking-water in his house was warm. "Then when you want a warm bath," said Socrates, "it will be waiting for you."
"But it's too cold for bathing," said the man.
"Do your servants seem to mind drinking it or washing in it?"
"Quite the opposite — I've often marveled how contentedly they use it for both."
"Which is warmer to drink — the water in your house or the water in the temple of Asclepius?"
"The temple of Asclepius."
"And which is colder to bathe in — yours or the water in the cave of Amphiaraus?"
"The cave of Amphiaraus."
"Then consider this: you're in danger of being harder to please than a servant or an invalid."
A man was giving the slave who attended him a savage whipping, and when Socrates asked why he was so angry with his own servant, he said the fellow was lazy and gluttonous, a good-for-nothing who loved money and hated work. "And has it ever occurred to you to consider," said Socrates, "which of the two more deserves the whipping — the master or the man?"
When someone was dreading the journey to Olympia, he said, "Why be afraid of the distance? At home you spend nearly the whole day walking around. On the way to Olympia you'll take a walk and have breakfast, take another walk and have dinner, and go to bed. Don't you see that five or six days' worth of your usual walks, laid end to end, will stretch from Athens to Olympia? I'd advise you to set out a day too early rather than a day too late. Being forced to stretch a day's journey past a reasonable length is a misery; taking one day more than you need is pure ease. Better to hurry at the start than on the road."
When another man said he was completely worn out from a long journey, Socrates asked whether he'd had baggage to carry.
"Not I," said the man. "Only my cloak."
"Were you traveling alone, or was your servant with you?"
"I had my servant."
"Empty-handed, or carrying something?"
"Carrying my bedding and the rest of the baggage, of course."
"And how did he come through the journey?"
"Better than I did, I'd say."
"Well then — suppose you had had to carry his load. How would you have fared?"
"Badly. Or rather, I couldn't have carried it at all."
"What an admission! To be capable of so much less work than a slave boy — does that sound to you like a man in good condition?"
When people dined together and some brought little food while others brought a great deal, Socrates would tell the servant either to put the small contributions into the common stock or to serve a share of them around to everyone. The men with the grand provisions were then ashamed not to take their share of the common stock — and ashamed, in turn, not to throw their own supplies in as well. So in went the grand provisions with the rest; and since they now got no more than the men who brought little, they soon stopped spending money on delicacies.
At one supper Socrates noticed that a member of the party had pushed aside his bread and was working on the delicacies alone. The conversation happened to be about names — what actions each word properly applies to — so Socrates put it to the company: "Can we say why we call a man a 'relish-eater'? What exactly does he do to earn the name? Everyone adds a relish to his bread when he can get one, but surely that alone doesn't make him a relish-eater — does it?"
"Hardly," said one of the company.
"Well then," said Socrates, "what about a man who eats the relish by itself, no bread at all — not for training, but for pleasure? Is he a relish-eater or not?"
"If he isn't, it's hard to say who is," came the answer. And someone else put in, "What about the man who eats a little bread with a great deal of relish?"
"He's earned the title fairly too, I'd say," said Socrates. "And while everyone else prays to the gods for a good harvest of grain, he presumably prays, 'May my relishes multiply!'"
At this the young man, feeling the conversation was aimed his way, didn't stop eating the delicacies — but he did help himself to bread. Socrates, who missed nothing, said, "Keep an eye on our friend there, you next to him, and see whether he treats the bread as relish or the relish as bread."
Another time he saw one of the company tasting several dishes with a single piece of bread. "Could there be more extravagant cookery," he said, "or better designed to ruin the dishes, than eating so many at once — cramming in more mixtures than the cook himself would ever allow? He combines ingredients the cooks keep apart, so if they're right, he's wrong, and he's destroying their art. And really, isn't it absurd to hire the most skilled cooks you can find, and then, claiming no such skill yourself, rearrange their work? And there's something worse in store for the man who trains himself to eat many dishes at once: when there aren't many on the table, habit will make him feel deprived — while the man used to sending down his bread with a single relish will dine cheerfully however few there are."
He also used to say that in the Attic dialect, "making good cheer" was another name for eating, and that the "good" tacked on stood for eating food that troubled neither soul nor body and wasn't hard to find. So he applied "making good cheer" to modest, well-ordered living.
That was Socrates: so helpful in every situation and in every way that nobody with ordinary sensitivity who watched him could miss the fact that time spent in his company — anywhere, under any circumstances — was a priceless gain. Even the memory of him, once he was gone, was no small benefit to those who had grown used to his company and welcomed him. And he was just as helpful to his friends in his playful moods as in his serious ones.
Take that saying so often on his lips: "I am in love with so-and-so." It was obvious to everyone that what drew his soul was never a beautiful body in its bloom, but a soul unfolding toward virtue. And he spotted these "good natures" by certain signs: quickness to learn whatever they turned their attention to; a memory that held on to what they had learned; and a real passion for the studies that help a person manage a household or a state — for dealing well, in general, with people and human affairs. People like that, he maintained, needed only an education to become happy themselves, to run their own households happily, and to be able to make other people — whole states or single individuals — happy as well.
He had a different approach for different kinds of people. Those who thought their natural gifts were so good they could look down on learning, he taught this lesson: it is precisely the most gifted nature that needs training and education most. Look at horses, he would say. It is the spirited, fiery thoroughbred that, if properly broken in as a colt, grows into a superb and serviceable animal — but left unbroken, turns out completely unmanageable and good for nothing. Or take dogs: a puppy that shows the appetite for hard work and the eagerness to go after wild game that mark a fine breed will, if raised well, prove excellent for the hunt or any other useful work; but neglect his training and he turns into a stupid, frantic brute who cannot obey the simplest command. It is exactly the same with human beings. The young man with the best natural endowment — the strongest spirit, the firmest determination to carry through whatever he takes in hand — will, if trained and taught what is right to do, become a supremely good and useful man. He does what is best, on the grandest scale. But leave that same young man ignorant and untrained, and he becomes not just very bad but very dangerous. Lacking the knowledge to see what is right to do, he will often put his hand to villainy, and the very size and force of his character make it impossible to rein him in or turn him off his evil course. So in his case too the achievements come on the grandest scale — but the worst.
Then there was the type so swollen with pride in his riches that he considered himself excused from any further education — since "money makes the man," and his wealth would be quite enough to get him whatever he wanted and win him honors from an admiring world. Socrates would bring such people back to their senses. Wasn't it folly, he would point out, to suppose that without instruction a man could draw the line between what helps and what harms in conduct? And folly again to suppose that, without being able to draw that line, a man could use wealth alone to get whatever he liked, or find the useful path lying plain in front of him? Wasn't it the height of simplicity to think that a man who cannot work to any profit can be doing well, or be equipped in any adequate way for the business of life? And the height of simplicity again to think that mere wealth, without real knowledge, could buy a reputation for some excellence — or that without such a reputation a man could win distinction and fame?
Then there was a third type: the people convinced they had already received the best education there is, and proud of their wisdom. Let me describe how he dealt with these.
Euthydemus "the handsome" had, Socrates learned, collected a large library of the most celebrated poets and philosophers, and on the strength of it he already considered himself more than a match for anyone his age in wisdom — and fully expected, before long, to outshine them all in his capacity for speech and action alike. At first, being too young to enter the marketplace, he would settle himself in a saddler's shop nearby whenever he had business to conduct. So that is where Socrates went, taking a few of his companions along. Someone opened by raising a question: was it through keeping company with the wise, or by his own unaided talent, that Themistocles had risen so far above his fellow citizens that the whole city instinctively turned to him whenever it needed a capable man? Socrates, aiming to stir up Euthydemus, answered that it was charmingly naive to believe that the minor arts couldn't be mastered without qualified teachers, while leadership of the state — the greatest concern of all — was supposed to drop into a man's lap by itself, like a windfall.
On a later visit, Euthydemus was there but visibly keeping his distance, as though the last thing he wanted was to appear to admire Socrates for wisdom. So Socrates remarked, "Gentlemen, it's obvious from how our friend Euthydemus spends his time that once he comes of age, he won't hold back his advice when the state puts a question up for debate. And you can imagine the elegant opening he has prepared for his speeches, given how anxious he is not to be suspected of ever learning anything from anybody. Clearly he'll begin like this: 'Men of Athens, I have never at any time learned anything from anyone. When I heard of a man able in speech and action, I made no attempt to meet him. I never troubled to find myself a teacher among those who know. Quite the reverse: I have steadily avoided not merely learning from others, but even the faintest appearance of it. However, whatever occurs to me on its own, I will gladly share with you.' Wouldn't that opening suit a candidate for city physician just as well? He could begin, 'Men of Athens, I have never studied medicine under anybody, and I never sought out any doctor as my teacher. In fact I have been constantly on my guard, not only against learning anything from the profession, but against the least appearance of knowing medicine at all. Nevertheless, if you'll grant me the post, I promise to do my best to pick up the skill — by experimenting on you.'" Everyone present laughed at that opening speech, and the matter dropped there.
In time it was plain that Euthydemus had begun to pay attention to what was said, though he was still careful never to utter a sound himself — as if silence might earn him a reputation for depth. Wanting to cure him of that, Socrates said, "Isn't it strange? People who want to learn the harp or the flute, or to ride, or to master any skill of that kind, aren't content to work away unceasingly in private at the thing they want to excel in. They seek out the best-regarded teachers they can find and do everything, endure everything, to follow those teachers' judgment in all things — as if there were no other way to amount to anything. Yet among those who hope to become powerful speakers and statesmen, there are some who see no reason they shouldn't be able to do everything politics demands at a moment's notice, by sheer inspiration, with no preparation whatever. And surely statecraft is the harder of the two — there are more competitors in that field and fewer who ever reach the prize, which can only mean it demands more sustained effort, not less."
Those were the kinds of things Socrates said in Euthydemus's hearing in the early days. When he saw that the young man was not only tolerating the conversation more readily but had become an eager listener, he went to the saddler's shop alone, and with Euthydemus seated beside him, this conversation took place.
"Tell me, Euthydemus, is it true what I hear — that you've collected a great many books by the men called wise?"
"Quite true, Socrates. And I mean to keep collecting until I own every book I can lay my hands on."
"By Hera! I admire you for it — for choosing to store up treasures of wisdom rather than silver and gold. Clearly you don't believe money makes men better; you believe the thoughts of the wise enrich their owners with virtue."
Euthydemus was delighted to hear this, thinking to himself, "In Socrates' eyes, I'm well on the road to wisdom." But Socrates, seeing him pleased with the praise, went on: "And what is it you want to excel at, Euthydemus, that you're collecting all these books?"
While Euthydemus sat silent, considering his answer, Socrates offered, "A great doctor, perhaps? The medical treatises alone would fill a good-sized library."
"No indeed. Not I!"
"An architect, then? That calls for a well-stocked mind too."
"No, that's not my ambition."
"A mathematician, maybe, like Theodorus?"
"No, not a mathematician either."
"An astronomer, then?" And when the young man shook his head at that too — "A rhapsodist, a professional reciter? I'm told you own the complete works of Homer."
"God forbid! Not that! Rhapsodists know their epic poetry down to the letter, of course — but they're empty-headed creatures themselves."
At last Socrates said, "Can it be, Euthydemus, that you're after the excellence that makes men statesmen and managers — fit to rule, able to benefit everyone else and themselves besides?"
"Yes," he replied. "That is the excellence I want — more than anything."
"Upon my word!" said Socrates. "Then you've set your heart on the noblest of virtues and the greatest of the arts. It is the property of kings; they call it 'royal.' But tell me — have you considered whether a man can excel at it without being just and upright?"
"Certainly I have. Without justice, no one can even be a good citizen."
"And no doubt you've taken care of that first step?"
"Socrates, I think I could hold my own against anyone as a just man."
"And do just men have their own characteristic works, the way carpenters and shoemakers do?"
"Of course they do."
"And just as a carpenter can show you his products, a just man should be able to describe and display his?"
"I see!" said Euthydemus. "You're afraid I can't describe the works of justice. Well, believe me, I can — and the works of injustice too, since there are plenty of those to see and hear every single day."
"Then suppose we write a J on this side and a U on that," Socrates proposed, "and whatever strikes us as a work of justice we'll file under the J, and whatever seems a work of injustice under the U?"
"By all means, if you think it will help."
So Socrates wrote the letters as he had suggested, and continued. "Lying exists among men, does it not?"
"Certainly."
"Which column does it go in?"
"Under injustice, obviously."
"Deceit exists too?"
"Very much so."
"Which side for deceit?"
"Injustice, clearly."
"And doing people harm — mischief of any sort?"
"That too."
"And selling free men into slavery?"
"That too."
"And none of these can be allowed to sit on the side of justice, can it, Euthydemus?"
"That would be monstrous."
"Very well. But suppose a man is elected general and enslaves an unjust, wicked, and hostile city. Are we to say he's doing wrong?"
"Certainly not."
"We'll admit he's doing what is just?"
"Certainly."
"And suppose he deceives the enemy while at war with them?"
"That's fair and just too."
"And if he steals and plunders their property — isn't he doing what is just?"
"Certainly. When you started, I assumed you meant friends only."
"So everything we set down under injustice will now have to be entered under justice as well?"
"Apparently."
"Then let's enter them there, and draw a new line: it is just to do such things to an enemy, unjust to do them to a friend — with a friend, one should be as straightforward as possible."
"I agree completely," said Euthydemus.
"So far so good," said Socrates. "But now suppose a general sees his troops losing heart, and invents a story that reinforcements are on the way, and with that lie restores their courage. Which column does that piece of deceit belong in?"
"Under justice, I'd say."
"Or suppose a man's son is sick and needs medicine but refuses to take it, and the father tricks him — slips the medicine into his food — and by that lie restores the boy to health. Where do we file that fraud?"
"The same place, in my judgment."
"Or suppose your friend is in black despair, and you're afraid he'll do away with himself, so you steal his knife or anything else of the kind. Which side does that theft go on?"
"That too must go under justice, surely."
"You're telling me, then, that even with friends, straight dealing isn't the rule in every case?"
"Heaven forbid!" the young man exclaimed. "I take back what I said before, if I'm allowed."
"Allowed! Of course you are — far better that than filing a false entry. But there's one more point we shouldn't leave unexamined. When a man deceives a friend to the friend's harm, which is more unjust — to do it deliberately or without meaning to?"
"Honestly, Socrates, I've stopped trusting my own answers. Everything I said before looks different to me now than it did then. Still, let me risk one more opinion: the deliberate deceiver is worse than the unintentional one."
"And do you think there's a study, a science, of justice, just as there is of letters?"
"I do."
"And which man would you call more literate — one who misspells and misreads on purpose, or one who does it without meaning to?"
"The one who does it on purpose — because he can do it correctly whenever he chooses."
"So the deliberate misspeller may be a literate man, while the involuntary one is simply illiterate?"
"He must be. I don't see any way out of it."
"And which of the two knows what is just — the man who lies and deceives on purpose, or the one who does it without meaning to?"
"The deliberate one, clearly."
"Now, you say the man who knows letters is more literate than the man who doesn't?"
"Yes."
"And the man who knows what is just is more just than the man who doesn't?"
"I suppose so — but for the life of me I can't make head or tail of my own admission."
"Well, look at it this way. Suppose a man wants to tell the truth but can never hold the same story for two minutes together. First he says the road runs east, then no, it runs west; he adds up a column of figures and gets one total, then another — now more, now less. What do you make of a man like that?"
"Heaven help us — clearly he doesn't know what he thought he knew."
"And you know the name people give certain men — 'slavish,' or 'little better than a slave'?"
"I do."
"Is it a name for their wisdom, or their ignorance?"
"Their ignorance, clearly."
"Ignorance of smithing, say?"
"Certainly not."
"Ignorance of carpentry, then?"
"No, not that either."
"Of shoemaking?"
"No, none of those. If anything, the opposite — most of the people who know those trades are the very ones called little better than slaves."
"So it's the name reserved for those who are ignorant of the beautiful, the good, and the just?"
"That's my opinion."
"Then we must strain every nerve, in every way, to escape being slaves."
"Socrates," the young man burst out, "by all that's holy, I flattered myself that I was studying philosophy — that I was on the right road to everything a man needs who wants to make beauty and goodness his pursuit. So you can imagine my despair when, after all my labor, I can't even answer questions about the things a man most needs to know — and there's no path of progress open to me, no way left to improve."
At that Socrates said, "Tell me, Euthydemus, have you ever been to Delphi?"
"Yes, certainly — twice."
"And did you notice an inscription somewhere on the temple: KNOW THYSELF?"
"I did."
"And did you pay it no attention? Or did you take it to heart and try to discover who and what you are?"
"I certainly didn't," he answered. "That much, at least, I was sure I already knew. If I didn't know even myself, what in the world did I know?"
"And does a man know himself, do you think, if he knows his own name and nothing more? Or must he go to work the way a buyer of horses does? A buyer doesn't consider that he knows the animal he's after until he has examined it point by point: is it obedient or stubborn, strong or weak, fast or slow — and how does it stand on everything else that makes a horse useful or useless for a horse's work? Shouldn't a man examine his own nature the same way, measured against what a human being needs, and learn his own capacities?"
"Yes, I see it now: the man who doesn't know his own ability doesn't know himself."
"And isn't this plain too — that self-knowledge brings men countless blessings, and ignorance of themselves countless evils? The man who knows himself knows what is good for him. He sees the limits of his powers; by doing what he knows, he supplies himself with what he needs and does well; by keeping clear of what he doesn't know, he avoids mistakes and so avoids misfortune. And now that he has a measure to judge other men by as well, he makes use of them too, to gain what is good and steer around what is bad. But the man who doesn't know himself, who is deceived about his own capacity, is in the same fog about everyone and everything else. He knows neither what he wants, nor what he is doing, nor the people he is dealing with; wrong about all of it, he misses the good and stumbles into the bad.
"The man who knows what he's doing succeeds at it, and wins fame and honor. His equals are glad to work with him, while those who are failing in their own affairs beg for his advice, his leadership, his protection; they pin their hopes of happiness on him, and love him best of all men for it. The man who doesn't know what he's doing chooses badly, fails at whatever he attempts, and not only suffers loss and punishment for his blunders — he loses his reputation step by step, becomes a laughing-stock, and ends his life in dishonor and contempt.
"And what is true of individuals is true of states. A city that doesn't know its own strength, and goes to war with a stronger one, ends up uprooted — or enslaved."
"Believe me, I entirely agree," said Euthydemus. "The precept KNOW THYSELF can't be prized too highly. But where does one begin the self-examination? That's what I look to you to explain, if you'd be so kind."
"Well," said Socrates, "I take it you know perfectly well which things are good and which are bad? We can rely on you that far?"
"Why, yes, surely — if I couldn't tell that much, I'd be worse than any slave."
"Come then, explain them to me."
"That's easy enough. First, health in itself I count a good and disease in itself an evil; and next, the sources of each — food, drink, daily habits — I count good or bad according to whether they lead toward health or toward disease."
"Then health and disease themselves are good when they lead to something good, and bad when they lead to something bad?"
"But when could health lead to something bad, or disease to something good?"
"Why, bless me, often enough!" replied Socrates. "Take a doomed expedition, or a disastrous voyage, or any calamity of that kind — and there are plenty to choose from. The men whose health and strength let them take part are lost; the ones left behind, too sick or too feeble to go, are saved."
"That's true. But you'll admit there are advantages that come with strength and losses that come with weakness."
"Even so — should we call things that benefit us one moment and injure us the next good, strictly speaking, any more than bad?"
"No — certainly not, by that argument. But wisdom, Socrates — you must at least grant that wisdom is indisputably a good. What is there a wise man wouldn't do better than a fool?"
"Really? Have you never heard of Daedalus — how Minos seized him precisely because of his wisdom, and forced him to be his slave, robbed at one stroke of his homeland and his freedom? How, trying to escape with his son, he caused the boy's death, couldn't even save himself, and was carried off among barbarians and enslaved all over again?"
"I know the old story."
"And haven't you heard of 'the woes of Palamedes,' the commonest theme of the poets — how Odysseus envied him his wisdom, and destroyed him for it?"
"That tale's told too."
"And how many others, do you suppose, have been seized for their wisdom, shipped off to the Great King, and made slaves at his court?"
"Well then — happiness, prosperity," Euthydemus exclaimed. "Surely that is a blessing, and the most unquestionable of all!"
"It might be," Socrates replied, "if it weren't itself compounded of questionable blessings."
"What component of happiness could possibly be questionable?"
"None — unless, of course, we're going to count beauty in it, or strength, or wealth, or reputation, or anything of that sort."
"By heaven, of course we're going to count them! What would happiness be without them?"
"By heaven, then we'll be counting in the commonest sources of human misery! How many people have been ruined by their good looks — undone by admirers driven half-mad at the sight of beauty in bloom! How many, trusting their strength, have attempted things beyond their power and come to grief! How many have been softened by their wealth, then plotted against and destroyed! How many, through fame and political power, have suffered a world of misery!"
"Well," the young man said, "if I'm not even right to praise happiness, then I confess I don't know what a man ought to pray to the gods for."
"These are matters," Socrates went on, "that you've perhaps never examined, because you were so confident you knew them already. But since the state you're preparing to lead is a democracy, of course you know what a democracy is?"
"I certainly presume so."
"And can a man know what a government of the people is without knowing who the people are?"
"Certainly not."
"And whom do you take the people to be?"
"The poor citizens, I'd say."
"So you know who the poor are?"
"Of course I do."
"And who the rich are, presumably?"
"As surely as I know the poor."
"And what do you mean by poor and rich?"
"The poor are those who don't have enough to cover their needs; the rich are those who have more than enough."
"Have you noticed, though, that some people with a mere pittance find it not only sufficient but manage to save a surplus out of it — while others can't make a large fortune stretch far enough?"
"I have indeed — and thank you for the reminder," said Euthydemus. "One hears of kings and tyrants driven by want to crimes like the neediest paupers."
"Then if that's how things stand, we'll have to class those kings among the people — and some owners of small estates, provided they manage them well, among the rich?"
"My own dull wits force me to admit it," said Euthydemus. "I begin to think my best course is to keep my mouth shut altogether. A little more of this and I'll be proved to know absolutely nothing." And he went away crestfallen, in an agony of self-contempt, convinced that he was truly no better than a slave.
Many of those whom Socrates reduced to this same condition refused ever to come near him again — and those, for his part, he wrote off as blockheads. But Euthydemus had the wit to see that his one hope of becoming a man worth anything was to spend as much time with Socrates as he possibly could. From that day on he never left his side except when he had to, and even began imitating some of his teacher's habits and practices. And Socrates, once he saw how matters stood with him, stopped rattling him and began explaining, in the simplest and plainest way, what he believed a man most needed to know and to practice.
Socrates, it should be clear by now, was in no hurry for his companions to become skilled speakers, men of action, or clever inventors — not until they had first laid a solid foundation of self-control. Men who had those abilities without that saving virtue, he believed, only became worse men, with greater power to do harm. So his first concern was to instill in his companions a wise attitude toward the gods. Others who were present on particular occasions have recorded how he talked with people on this theme; I will confine myself to one discussion with Euthydemus that I heard myself.
"Tell me, Euthydemus," Socrates began, "has it ever struck you how carefully the gods have provided for everything human beings need?"
"No," he said, "I can't say it ever has."
"Well, you hardly need reminding that first of all we need light — and light is what the gods supply us."
"Very true," said Euthydemus. "If we didn't have it, then for all the good our eyes could do us we might as well have been born blind."
"And since we also need rest and relaxation, they give us the blessing of night, the balm of quiet rest."
"Yes," he answered, "we owe them a great deal for that gift too."
"And then, since the sun in its brightness marks out the hours of the day for us and lights up everything we do, while night in its darkness blurs every distinction — haven't they set the stars overhead, which tell us the watches of the night, so that we can take care of many of our needs even in the dark?"
"So they have," he said.
"And let's not forget the moon: doesn't she show us not only the divisions of the night but the divisions of the month as well?"
"Certainly," he answered.
"And what about this — that we need food, and the heavenly powers supply that too? They make good things spring up out of the earth for our benefit, and for our benefit they provide the right seasons in their turn, furnishing us not only with the many different things we need but with the sources of our joy and gladness besides."
"Yes," he answered eagerly, "all of that truly bears witness to a love for man."
"And what of another priceless gift — water? It works together with the earth and the seasons to give birth and growth to everything useful to us; more than that, it helps nourish our very bodies, and mixed into everything that feeds us it makes our food easier to digest, healthier, and better-tasting. And notice this: the more of it we need, the more abundantly it is supplied. What do you say to a gift like that?"
"There again," said Euthydemus, "I see the mark of providential care."
"And then there is fire, which the same heavenly power has provided — our defense against cold, our helper in darkness, our fellow worker in every craft and in every tool that men invent or make for their own use. To put it briefly: nothing worth mentioning that serves human life gets made without fire. What do you say to that?"
"Yes," said Euthydemus, "that is generosity by design if anything ever was."
"Then consider the movements of the sun. When it has made its turn in winter, it draws near to us again, ripening some crops and drying out others whose season is past; and when it has finished that work, it comes no closer, but turns away, as if taking care not to scorch us and do us harm; and then, when in its retreat it reaches the point past which we would plainly freeze to death from the cold, notice how it turns about once more and comes back, traveling through exactly that region of the sky where it can do us the most good."
"Yes, honestly," he answered, "these things certainly look as if they were ordered for man's sake."
"And again, since it's obvious we could endure neither scorching heat nor freezing cold if either came on us suddenly, notice how gradually the sun approaches and how gradually it withdraws, so that we arrive at each extreme without ever noticing the change."
"For my part," he replied, "I'm beginning to wonder whether the gods have any occupation at all except taking care of man. The one thing that keeps me from saying so outright is that the other animals seem to share these benefits along with us."
"Why, of course — and isn't it plain that the animals themselves are born and raised for man's sake? No other living creature gets so much good out of sheep and goats, horses and cattle and donkeys and the rest of the animals as man does. He depends on them, I should think, even more than on plants and crops; at any rate he uses both alike for food and for trade, and a large part of the human race doesn't live off the soil at all, but on the milk and cheese and meat of their flocks and herds. And everywhere men tame and domesticate the more useful kinds of animals and turn them into fellow workers in war and in everything else."
"I can't disagree with that," he answered, "when I see animals far stronger than man become so obedient to his hand that he can use them however he pleases."
"And as we reflect on the endless beauty and usefulness and variety of nature, what are we to say of the fact that man has been given senses matched to all that diversity, through which we take our fill of every good thing? Or of the power of reasoning planted in us, which lets us draw conclusions about what we perceive, and with the help of memory work out how each kind of thing can be turned to our good, and devise countless contrivances for enjoying what is good and fending off what is bad? Or, last of all, of the gift of speech, through which we teach one another, share in all the blessings I've named, form communities, establish laws, and live a civilized life? What are we to think of all that?"
"It certainly does appear, Socrates, that the gods show great regard for humankind — tender care, even."
"And what do you make of the fact that where we are powerless to plan wisely for our own future, at exactly that point they lend us their help — telling the inquirer through divination what is about to happen, and teaching him how it may best be turned to good account?"
"And you, Socrates," said Euthydemus, "they seem to treat as an even closer friend than the rest of men, if they show you by signs in advance, without even waiting to be asked, what you should and should not do."
"And you will discover for yourself that I'm telling the truth, if you don't wait to see the visible forms of the gods themselves, but are content to see their works — and, with those before your eyes, to worship and honor the divine makers of them. Reflect that the gods themselves point us toward this lesson. Every one of them gives us his blessings freely, yet not one of them ever steps out from behind the veil to hand over a single gift. And above all, the one who orders and holds together the whole universe — in which all things are beautiful and good; who keeps it forever fresh for our use, sound and ageless, free of sickness and decay, serving his will unerringly and faster than thought — this God is seen performing the mightiest works of all, yet in the actual running of them he remains invisible to mortal eyes.
"Consider, too, that the sun over our heads, which seems so plainly visible to everyone, will not let a man look at him too closely; stare at him shamelessly, and he snatches your eyesight away. And if the gods themselves are unseen, you will find their servants hidden as well. The thunderbolt is plainly hurled from the height of heaven, and it overpowers everything it meets — yet no eye can catch it coming or going at the moment it strikes. The winds too are themselves invisible, though what they do is plain to see, and we know them by their approach. And let's not forget the soul of man himself, which shares in the divine if anything human does: it rules within us as plainly as anything can, and yet it, like the rest, is hidden from our sight. Keep all this in mind, and don't look down on the invisible powers. Learn to recognize their strength from what they visibly accomplish, and honor the Divinity."
"Believe me, Socrates," Euthydemus replied, "there's no danger of my neglecting the divine power, even a little. That's not what worries me. What discourages me is the thought that no human soul could ever repay the kindness of the gods with the gratitude it deserves."
"Don't let that discourage you," he said. "You know what answer the god at Delphi gives to everyone who comes asking, 'How shall I return thanks to heaven?' — 'According to the law and custom of your city.' And the law and custom everywhere, I take it, is that a man should please the gods with offerings according to the ability that is in him. How could a man honor the gods more beautifully or more devoutly than by doing exactly what they themselves command? Only he must not slacken or fall short of his ability — because when a man does that, it's plain enough that at that moment he is not honoring the gods at all. So honor the gods not grudgingly but according to your ability; and when you have done that, be of good cheer and expect the greatest blessings. For where else should a sensible man look for great blessings, if not from those with the greatest power to help him? And how else can he hope to win them, except by pleasing his helpers? And how can he please them better than by obeying them as fully as he can?"
By words like these — and by conduct that matched his words — Socrates shaped and molded the hearts of his companions, making them at once more devout and more virtuous.
Where justice was concerned, he made no secret of his opinion — and he did not merely state it, he demonstrated it in action. In private life he was law-abiding and helpful to everyone he dealt with; in public he obeyed the magistrates in everything the laws required, in the life of the city and on military service alike, so that he stood out as a model of loyalty for everyone else. Three occasions in particular proved it. First, when he was serving as president of the Popular Assembly, he refused to let the sovereign people take an illegal vote, and stood on the side of the laws against a surge of popular feeling that, I think, would have broken any other man. Again, when the Thirty tried to give him orders that ran contrary to the laws, he refused to obey — when they forbade him to converse with the young, and when they ordered him and certain other citizens to arrest a man to be put to death, he stood out alone, on the ground that the orders they were giving him were against the laws. And finally, when he stood trial on the charge Meletus brought, he refused to play the usual courtroom game. Everyone knew that defendants won their acquittals by flattering the judges, by begging and appealing for pity in ways the laws forbade, and that many a man owed his life to exactly those methods. But Socrates would not do a single thing in court, however customary, that was not strictly legal; and though he could easily have been acquitted with only a slight bending of the rules, he chose to abide by the laws and die rather than break them and live.
He argued this position in conversation again and again, with one person after another; and one discussion in particular, with Hippias of Elis, on the subject of justice, has come to my knowledge.
Hippias had just arrived back in Athens after a long absence, and happened to be present while Socrates was telling some listeners how astonishing it was that if a man wanted someone taught to be a shoemaker or a carpenter or a metalworker or a horseman, he would know exactly where to send him. "They say," he added, "that if you want your horse or your ox trained properly, the world is full of instructors. But if you want to learn justice yourself, or have your son or your slave taught it, you have no idea where to find such instruction."
Hippias caught the words and needled him in his urbane way: "What, Socrates — still saying the same old things I used to hear from you years ago?"
"Yes," Socrates answered, "and what is stranger still, not only the same old things but on the same old subjects. You, I daresay, with your wide and versatile learning, never say the same thing twice on any subject."
"Naturally," he answered. "I always try to say something new."
"Even about things you know?" Socrates asked. "Suppose someone asks you how many letters there are in 'Socrates' and in what order — do you try to run off one list today and a different one tomorrow? Or in arithmetic, if someone asks whether twice five makes ten, does today's answer differ from yesterday's?"
"No," said Hippias, "on those subjects I do just what you do and repeat myself. But to come back to justice — I flatter myself I can now tell you something about it that neither you nor anyone else will be able to refute."
"By Hera!" Socrates exclaimed, "what a blessing you've discovered! Judges will stop splitting their votes; citizens will stop wrangling over right and wrong; no more lawsuits, no more party feuds; states will settle their differences, and wars will come to an end. For my part, I don't see how I can tear myself away from you until I've heard all about this grand discovery from your own lips."
"You shall hear it, all in good time," Hippias answered, "but not before you state your own belief plainly. What is justice? We've had quite enough of you ridiculing the rest of the world, questioning and cross-examining first one man and then another, while never rendering an account to anyone yourself or stating a plain opinion on a single subject."
"Why, Hippias," Socrates retorted, "haven't you noticed that I never stop proclaiming what I hold to be just?"
"And what exactly is this doctrine of yours? Let's have it in words."
"If I don't proclaim it in words," said Socrates, "I proclaim it in deeds and in fact. Or don't you think a deed is worth more as evidence than a word?"
"Worth far more," Hippias answered, "for many a man with justice on his lips commits injustice, but no man who does what is just can be unjust."
"Then have you ever heard of me, or seen me, or in any way caught me bearing false witness, or playing the informer, or setting friends quarreling, or stirring up faction in the city, or doing any other unjust thing?"
"No, I can't say I have."
"And don't you consider it just to abstain from injustice?"
"Now you're caught, Socrates — plainly trying to wriggle out of a plain statement. Asked what you believe justice to be, you keep telling us not what the just man does but what he doesn't do."
"I would have thought," Socrates answered, "that refusing to do injustice was credential enough of justice. But if you don't agree, see whether this pleases you better: I say that what is lawful is just."
"Do you mean," he asked, "that 'lawful' and 'just' are the same thing?"
"I do."
"I ask because I don't quite see what you mean by 'lawful,' or what you mean by 'just.'"
"You know what is meant by the laws of a city?"
"I do."
"And what do you take them to be?"
"The rules the citizens have enacted by agreement, about what should be done and what left undone."
"Then a citizen who runs his life by those enactments is law-abiding, and one who violates them is lawless?"
"Certainly."
"And the law-abiding man does what is just, while the lawless man does what is unjust?"
"Certainly."
"And the man who does what is just is just, and the man who does what is unjust is unjust?"
"Of course."
"It would appear, then, that the law-abiding man is just, and the lawless man unjust."
Then Hippias: "But laws, Socrates — how can anyone take the laws seriously, or take obeying them seriously, when the very people who made them are forever rejecting and rewriting them?"
"The same is true of war," Socrates replied. "Cities are forever undertaking wars and then making peace again."
"Perfectly true."
"Then what's the difference between belittling obedience to the laws because the laws may one day be repealed, and belittling discipline in wartime because peace will one day be made? Or perhaps you object to men fighting wholeheartedly for their homes and their country?"
"No indeed I don't! I heartily approve of it."
"Then take to heart the lesson Lycurgus taught the Spartans. Have you grasped that if he made Sparta stand out above every other state, it was by instilling in her, beyond everything else, a spirit of obedience to the laws? And among the magistrates and rulers of the various states, wouldn't you give first prize to those who do most to make their fellow citizens obey the laws? And wouldn't you admit that the state whose citizens are most distinguished for obedience to the laws thrives best in peacetime and is irresistible in war? But of all the blessings a state can enjoy, none stands higher than concord among its citizens. That is the constant theme of the councils of elders and of the best men in every community; everywhere throughout Greece it is established law that the citizens swear an oath of concord, and everywhere they actually swear it. Not, of course, that the citizens are to vote for the same choruses, or applaud the same flute-players, or choose the same poets, or confine themselves to the same pleasures — only that they are to obey the laws. For in the end the state whose citizens abide by the laws proves strongest and most prosperous; but without concord no state can be well governed and no household well managed.
"And in private life, what better protection can a man have than obedience to the laws? It is his safeguard against penalties and his guarantee of honors from the community; it lets him thread his way through the law courts without confusion, secure against defeat and assured of victory. It is the law-abiding man that people trust with their most sacred deposits — money, or their sons and daughters. In the eyes of the whole state he, and no one else, is the trustworthy man, the one who can be counted on to render everyone their due — parents and kinsmen and servants, friends and fellow citizens and foreigners. He is the man the enemy will soonest trust to arrange an armistice, a truce, a treaty of peace; the man they would rather have as an ally and fight beside. He is the man his country's allies will most confidently entrust with the command of their forces, or a garrison, or their very cities. He is the man who can be counted on to repay kindness with gratitude, and who therefore receives more kindness than anyone else. The most desirable of friends, the last man anyone wants for an enemy — no foreign state would choose to go to war with him. Surrounded by friends and free of foes, his very character draws men into friendship and alliance, and before him hatred and hostility melt away.
"And there, Hippias, I have done my part: that is my proof that the lawful and the just are one and the same. If you hold a contrary view, teach us."
"Upon my soul, Socrates," said Hippias, "I don't believe I hold any opinion contrary to what you've said about justice."
"But now, Hippias, do you know of certain unwritten laws?"
"Yes," he answered, "the ones observed in every country, and in the same sense everywhere."
"Could you say that men made them?"
"How could they have?" he answered. "All men could never have gathered together from the ends of the earth — and they don't even speak one language."
"Then who do you believe made these laws?"
"For my part, I think the gods must have made them for men. And I take this as proof: everywhere among men, the first law and custom is to worship and revere the gods."
"And honoring parents — that is the custom everywhere too?"
"That too."
"And so is the prohibition against parents having children with their children, and children with their parents?"
"No — there, Socrates, I stop. That one doesn't look to me like a law of God."
"Why not?"
"Because I notice that it is sometimes broken."
"People break plenty of other laws too," said Socrates. "But those who transgress the laws laid down by the gods pay a penalty no man can possibly escape — unlike the men who break human laws and escape punishment, some by slipping away unseen, some by force."
"And what is this inescapable penalty, Socrates, that parents and children who breed with one another have to pay?"
"The greatest of all. What worse can happen to human beings in producing children than to produce them badly?"
"But why should they produce them badly, when nothing prevents good parents from breeding good children?"
"Because to produce good children it is not enough that the two parents be good and of good stock. They must both also be in the prime and vigor of their bodies. Do you suppose the seed of those at their prime is like the seed of those who haven't yet reached it, or who are past it?"
"No — it stands to reason the seed would differ."
"And which is better?"
"That of those at their prime, clearly."
"So the seed of those not at their prime is not good?"
"Most likely not."
"Then that is not the right way to produce children?"
"It is not."
"Then children produced that way are produced as they ought not to be?"
"So it appears to me."
"Then who will be badly born, if not these?"
"I grant you that opinion too," Hippias replied.
"Again — isn't it a custom universally respected to return good for good and kindness for kindness?"
"A custom, yes — but that one, too, gets broken."
"Then the man who breaks it pays his penalty in finding himself deserted: stripped of good friends, and driven to chase after people who don't love him. Isn't it so? The man who treats me well when I deal with him is a good friend to me; but if I fail to repay his kindness, my ingratitude makes him hate me — and yet I must keep pursuing him and clinging to him, because his company is worth so much to me."
"Yes, Socrates. In every one of these cases, I admit, the hand of the gods shows through. A law that carries its own penalty for breaking it suggests to my mind a lawgiver better than human."
"And in your opinion, Hippias, do the gods legislate what is just, or the opposite of what is just?"
"Not the opposite, Socrates — heaven forbid! If God himself could not legislate justly, hardly anyone else could."
"It would seem, then, Hippias, that the gods themselves are well pleased that the lawful and the just should be one and the same."
By such words and such conduct, teaching by example and by precept alike, he helped make those who came near him more upright and more just.
And now I want to show how he made his companions more capable in action. First of all, since his creed was that self-control is the indispensable foundation of any noble achievement, he showed himself to his companions as a man disciplined beyond all others; and then, by conversation and discussion, he encouraged them toward self-control above everything else. He kept the things that lead to virtue constantly in his own mind, and kept reminding everyone he met of them. One conversation of his with Euthydemus on the subject of self-control has come to my knowledge, and it will serve to illustrate.
"Tell me, Euthydemus," he began, "do you believe freedom is a noble and magnificent possession, whether for a man or for a state?"
"I can't conceive of a nobler or more magnificent one," he answered.
"Then do you believe a man is free who is ruled by the pleasures of the body and, because of them, cannot do what is best?"
"Certainly not."
"No — presumably doing what is best looks like freedom to you, and having masters over you who prevent it looks like the loss of freedom?"
"Absolutely."
"So it seems clear to you that the man with no self-control is the very opposite of free?"
"Upon my word, I strongly suspect so."
"And does it seem to you that the man without self-control is merely prevented from doing what is noblest, or that he is actually driven to do what is most shameful?"
"Driven to the one, I think, as surely as he is blocked from the other."
"And what sort of lords and masters are they, do you think, who block what is best and enforce what is worst?"
"Goodness knows — the very worst masters there could be."
"And what do you take to be the worst kind of slavery?"
"Slavery to the worst masters," he answered.
"It would seem, then, that the man without self-control is bound over to the very worst kind of slavery?"
"So it appears."
"And doesn't this same lack of self-control shut wisdom — the best of all things — out of a man's life, and plunge him into its opposite? Doesn't it drag him off toward what is pleasant, and keep him from attending to the things that would truly benefit him and from learning to understand them? And often, though he can see the good and the bad perfectly well, doesn't it confound his wits and make him choose the worse in place of the better?"
"Yes — that is how it goes."
"And a sound and temperate mind — who has less claim to that than the man without self-control? The works of a temperate spirit and the works of self-indulgence are exact opposites, surely?"
"That too I admit."
"And when it comes to caring for the things a man ought to care about and giving himself to them — can you think of anything that fights against it harder than this same lack of self-control?"
"Nothing that I can think of."
"And can anything worse befall a man? Can he fall under a more ruinous influence than the one that makes him choose the harmful in place of the helpful, coaxes him to devote himself to the bad and neglect the good, and forces him — like it or not — to do what every man in his sober senses would shrink from?"
"I can imagine nothing worse."
"And self-control, it is reasonable to suppose, works the opposite effects on men from the lack of it?"
"It is."
"And what works the opposite of the very worst is presumably the very best?"
"That follows naturally."
"So it looks, Euthydemus, doesn't it, as if self-control is the best thing a man can have?"
"It does indeed, Socrates."
"But now, Euthydemus, has one fact ever struck you?"
"What fact?"
"That in the end, lack of self-control cannot even deliver us to that realm of sweetness some people think is its special territory. It is self-control, and nothing else, that holds the passport to the highest pleasures."
"How so?" he asked. "In what way?"
"This way," Socrates answered. "Lack of self-control will not let us hold out against hunger or thirst or desire or lack of sleep — and enduring those is the only road to any real pleasure in eating and drinking, in love, in rest and in sweet sleep: waiting patiently, holding out, until each pleasure arrives at its sweetest moment. And so lack of self-control cuts us off from any full enjoyment of the most obvious and most constantly recurring pleasures. Only self-control enables us to endure the pains I've named, and so only self-control gives us any pleasure worth remembering in these everyday cases."
"That is the plain truth," he answered.
"Furthermore, if there is any joy in learning something beautiful and good, or in the patient discipline that lets a man keep his body in shape, manage his household well, make himself useful to his friends and his city, and master his enemies — pursuits that bring not only the greatest advantages but the deepest satisfactions — it is the self-controlled who reap those fruits in the very doing of them, while the man with no self-control has no share in any of them. For who, we may fairly say, has less claim to such things than the man least able to do them — tied down as he is to chasing whatever pleasure lies nearest to hand?"
Euthydemus replied: "Socrates, you seem to me to be saying that a man who is mastered by the pleasures of the body has nothing to do with virtue at all."
"And what is the difference, Euthydemus," he asked, "between a man without self-control and the dullest of beasts? If a man abandons every high aim, gives up searching for what is best, and strives only to gratify his sense of pleasure, how is he better than the silliest of cattle? No — it is given to the self-controlled alone to search out the things of highest worth, and, sorting them out by kinds in word and in deed, to choose the good deliberately and hold back from the bad. That is how a man becomes best and happiest," he added, "and most capable of reasoning and discussion. The very word 'discussion' — dialectic — comes from people getting together to deliberate in common, sorting things by kinds. So a man ought to prepare himself for that as thoroughly as he can, and pursue it with earnest resolution beyond everything else; for that is the road to excellence, and that is what makes a man fittest to lead his fellows and strongest in debate."
Now let me try to explain how Socrates developed this skill in dialectic among his companions. He was firmly convinced that a man who knows what each thing really is can explain that knowledge to others — and that a man who lacks it will, unsurprisingly, stumble himself and trip up everyone else along with him. That is why he never stopped examining, together with his companions, what each thing that exists truly is. It would be a long business to go through all the definitions he arrived at, so I will give just enough examples to show his method. Take, first, his investigation of piety. The inquiry ran, fairly represented, something like this.
"Tell me, Euthydemus," he said, "what sort of thing do you take piety to be?"
"Something supremely fine and excellent, surely," Euthydemus answered.
"And can you tell me what sort of person the pious man is?"
"I would say he is a man who honors the gods."
"And may a man honor the gods in any style he happens to like?"
"No — there are laws that govern how it must be done."
"Then whoever knows those laws will know how he must honor the gods?"
"I think so."
"And a man who knows how he must honor the gods — does he think he ought to do it any way other than the way he knows? Isn't that so?"
"That is so."
"And does anyone honor the gods otherwise than he thinks he ought?"
"I think not."
"So it comes to this: the man who knows what the law requires concerning the gods will honor the gods lawfully?"
"Certainly."
"And the man who honors them lawfully honors them as he ought?"
"I see no alternative."
"And the man who honors them as he ought is a pious man?"
"Certainly."
"Then we shall have a correct definition if we define the pious man as the man who knows what the law requires concerning the gods?"
"So it seems to me, at any rate."
"Now, about human beings: may a man deal with other people in any way he pleases?"
"No. There too, the law-abiding man is the one who knows what is lawful in our dealings with one another — the rules by which those dealings must be conducted."
"Then people who conduct their dealings with one another according to those rules deal with each other as they ought?"
"Obviously."
"And people who deal with each other as they ought deal well and nobly?"
"Certainly."
"And people who deal well and nobly with mankind handle human affairs well?"
"That would seem to follow."
"And I take it that those who obey the laws do what is just?"
"Without a doubt."
"And do you know what sort of things are called just?"
"What the laws command."
"So those who do what the laws command do what is just, and do what they ought?"
"I see no alternative."
"Now, could anyone obey the laws without knowing what the laws command?"
"No."
"And do you suppose anyone who knows what he ought to do believes he ought not to do it?"
"No, I suppose not."
"And do you know of anyone who does other than what he believes he ought to do?"
"I do not."
"Then the man who knows what is lawful concerning human beings does what is just?"
"Without a doubt."
"And the man who does what is just is a just man?"
"Who else could be, if not he?"
"So we shall have reached a correct definition if we define the just as those who know what is lawful concerning human beings?"
"That is my opinion."
"And what shall we say wisdom is? Tell me — do you think the wise are wise in what they know, or are some people wise in what they do not know?"
"In what they know, obviously. How could a man be wise in something he doesn't know?"
"So the wise are wise by knowledge?"
"By what else could a man be wise, if not by knowledge?"
"And do you think wisdom is anything other than that by which a man is wise?"
"No — that and nothing else."
"Then it follows that knowledge and wisdom are the same thing?"
"So it seems to me."
"Now, do you think it possible for a man to know everything that exists?"
"Good heavens, no — not the hundredth part of it."
"Then it is impossible for a man to be wise in everything?"
"Quite impossible."
"So it would seem that each man is wise only in what he knows — his wisdom reaches exactly as far as his knowledge?"
"That is my opinion."
"Well now, Euthydemus, what about the good? Should we search for it this way?"
"What way?"
"Does the same thing seem to you equally advantageous to everyone?"
"No, I should say not."
"You would say that what benefits one man is sometimes harmful to another?"
"Decidedly."
"And would you say anything is good except what is beneficial?"
"Nothing else."
"Then it follows that the beneficial is good — for the person it benefits?"
"So it appears to me."
"And the beautiful — can we speak of a thing as beautiful in any way except relatively? Can you name anything — a body, a vessel, anything at all — that you know to be beautiful for every purpose whatever?"
"I confess I cannot."
"Then to use a thing for the purpose it serves is to use it beautifully?"
"Undoubtedly."
"And is any particular thing beautiful for anything else except the purpose for which it can be beautifully used?"
"For nothing else."
"So the useful is beautiful — relative to whatever it is useful for?"
"So it appears to me."
"And courage, Euthydemus? I take it you rank courage among the beautiful things — a noble quality?"
"One of the noblest," he answered.
"So you consider courage useful for no small ends?"
"For the greatest of all ends, God knows."
"Well, in the face of terrors and dangers, do you think it an advantage to be ignorant of them?"
"Certainly not."
"So people who feel no fear before dangers simply because they don't know what they are facing are not courageous?"
"Most true — otherwise a large share of madmen and cowards would count as courageous."
"And what about people who are terrified of things that aren't even dangerous?"
"Courageous, Socrates? Still less so, goodness knows."
"Then perhaps you would call those who are good in the face of terrors and dangers courageous, and those who are bad in the face of the same things cowards?"
"Certainly I would."
"And can you count anyone good in the face of such things except those who are able to handle them and turn them to noble account?"
"No — those and those alone."
"And those who are the sort to handle them badly are bad?"
"Who else, if not they?"
"Now, doesn't each group deal with these situations as it thinks it must and should?"
"How else would they deal with them?"
"And can those who are unable to handle them well know how they must and should deal with them?"
"I presume not."
"Then it follows that those who know how to behave in the face of danger are exactly those who have the power to do it?"
"Yes — those and those alone."
"Well then: what about the men who have made no serious blunder in such matters? Do they handle them badly?"
"I think not."
"And, conversely, those who handle them badly have blundered seriously?"
"Probably — indeed, it seems to follow."
"Then those who know how to deal with terrors and dangers well and nobly are courageous, and those who fail utterly at it are cowards?"
"So I judge them to be."
Kingship and tyranny were both, in his opinion, forms of government — but forms that differed from one another. Kingship was government over willing subjects, in accordance with the laws of the state; tyranny was government over unwilling subjects, not according to law, but according to whatever suited the whims of the ruler.
There were also, he held, three forms of citizen government. Where the magistrates are drawn from those who fulfill what the law prescribes, the constitution is an aristocracy — rule of the best. Where the qualification for office is property, it is a plutocracy — rule of wealth. And where all the citizens without distinction may hold office, that is a democracy — rule of the people.
Let me also explain how he answered a disputant who had no clear argument to offer, but simply insisted, without any attempt at proof, that some person of his own choosing was wiser, or more of a statesman, or braver than someone else. When that happened, Socrates would step back and bring the whole discussion to its underlying starting point, like this:
"You say the man you admire is a better citizen than the man I admire?"
"Yes — I say it again."
"Then wouldn't it have been better to ask first what the work of a good citizen is?"
"Let's do that."
"To start with public finance, then: he shows his superiority by increasing the state's resources and lightening its expenses?"
"Certainly."
"And in war, by making his state stronger than her rivals?"
"Clearly."
"And on an embassy, by making friends for her in place of enemies?"
"I should imagine so."
"And in public debate, by putting a stop to faction and fostering harmony among the citizens?"
"That is my opinion."
By carrying the argument back to its starting point this way, the truth became plain even to the disputant himself.
His own way of conducting a discussion was to proceed step by step, from one point of general agreement to the next. "There," he would say, "lies the real security of reasoning." And for that reason he was more successful at winning the assent of his hearers than anyone I have ever known. He used to say that Homer gave Odysseus the title of a safe speaker precisely because he had the gift of leading a discussion from one commonly accepted opinion to another.
That Socrates declared his own opinions frankly and simply to those who kept his company is, I think, proved well enough by the instances I have already recorded. But he was just as eager to make his companions independent — able to stand on their own feet in every undertaking their abilities suited them for — and that is what I hope to show now.
Of all the men I have ever known, he took the greatest care to find out what each of his companions really knew. Everything a beautiful and good man ought to know, he was most zealous to teach, so far as his own knowledge reached; and where it did not reach, he would introduce his friends to those who knew. And he did not fail to teach them how far an educated man should carry his practical knowledge of any given subject.
Take geometry. Everyone, he said, should learn geometry at least far enough to be able, when the need arises, to take over a piece of land or hand one on, to divide it up, or to assign a portion of it for cultivation — and to do it all by accurate measurement. That much geometry was so simple, so easy to pick up, that a man had only to put his mind to the business of measuring and he could learn the size of a field and walk away knowing exactly how it was reckoned. But he could not approve of pursuing geometry all the way to its unintelligible diagrams. What use those might be, he said, he failed to see — and he was not ignorant of these deep matters himself. Such studies, he said, were enough to eat up a man's whole life and keep him from many other, more useful things.
Astronomy was the same. He strongly urged everyone to learn a certain practical skill with the stars — enough to be able to tell the hour of the night, the season of the month and of the year, for the purposes of travel by land or sea: the march, the voyage, the setting of the watch. For everything connected with the night, the month, and the year, it was good to have reliable signs for telling one time and season from another. And these things, again, were easily learned from men who hunt by night, from ships' pilots, and from plenty of others whose business it is to know them. But pushing astronomy further — studying the bodies that wander outside our own course, the planets and the erratic stars, and wearing yourself out trying to discover their distances from the earth, their orbits, and their causes — this he strongly discouraged. He saw no more advantage in it, he said, than in the deep end of geometry. And yet he was not ignorant of astronomy's subtleties either; these studies too, he insisted, could use up a lifetime and keep a man from much that was more useful.
Speaking generally, when it came to the heavens he set his face against speculating about the machinery by which the divine power works its several operations. These matters, he believed, were beyond human discovery — and besides, he supposed the gods could hardly be pleased by a man prying into what they had chosen not to reveal. Indeed, the man who racked his brains over such questions ran a fair risk of losing his wits altogether — just as Anaxagoras, the headiest speculator of them all, had somewhat lost his in his attempt to explain the mechanisms of the gods. Anaxagoras took it on himself to declare that the sun and fire are the same thing. He ignored the fact that human beings can look at fire easily, while no one can gaze steadily into the face of the sun; and that the sun's rays darken the skin, while fire's do not. He forgot that nothing that grows from the earth can grow healthily without sunlight, while the effect of fire is to parch everything up and destroy it. And when he called the sun a "red-hot stone," he ignored yet another fact: a stone in a fire neither glows nor lasts, while the sun abides forever, the brightest of all things, undimmed.
Socrates also urged the study of arithmetic — but here, as everywhere, he warned the learner against empty and idle over-elaboration. Up to the limit set by usefulness, he was ready to join in any inquiry and follow out any argument with his companions; but there he stopped.
He particularly pressed his companions to take the utmost care of their health. They should learn all they could from the experts; and beyond that, each man should watch his own case throughout his life and discover for himself what food, what drink, and what kind of work suited him best, and how to use them so as to live the healthiest possible life. A man who studied his own constitution that way, he said, would be hard put to find a doctor who could better diagnose or prescribe what his health required.
And when anyone wanted help of a kind no human wisdom could supply, he advised him to turn to divination. The man who knows the means by which the gods give signs to men concerning their affairs, he said, will never find himself without divine guidance.
Now suppose someone were to set Socrates' claim — that the divine sign told him what he should and should not do — against the fact that the jury sentenced him to death, and conclude that this proved him guilty of lying, or of deluding himself, about this "divinity" of his. Let such a person consider two things. First, Socrates was by then so far advanced in years that if he had not died when he did, his life would have reached its natural end soon afterward. Second, as things turned out, he escaped the bitterest part of life — the years that dull every mind — and in exchange he got to display the full strength of his soul and win glory besides: partly by a defense unmatched for its truthfulness, its frankness, and its integrity, and partly by bearing the sentence of death with perfect gentleness and courage. For it is admitted on all sides that no man in living memory ever met death more nobly. After the sentence he had to live on for thirty days, because it was the month of the Delia — Apollo's festival — and the law allows no one to die at the public executioner's hand until the sacred embassy returns from the island of Delos. Through the whole of that month, as every one of his friends can testify, his life went on exactly as before. There was nothing to mark any difference between those days and the days that came before them, in the steady evenness of his courage — and his had always been a life of marvelous cheerfulness and calm content.
(Stop and ask: how could a man die more nobly or more beautifully than that? Or put it this way: dying so, his death was the noblest and most beautiful a man could die; being the most beautiful, it was also the most fortunate and heaven-blessed; and being the most blessed, it was the most precious in the sight of God.)
Now let me add some things about him that I heard from Hermogenes, the son of Hipponicus. He said that even after Meletus had filed the indictment, he used to hear Socrates conversing about anything and everything rather than the trial hanging over him, and he ventured to suggest that Socrates ought to be thinking about his line of defense. Socrates' first answer was: "Don't you think I have been practicing it my whole life long?" And when Hermogenes asked how, he explained that he had passed his days doing nothing else but examining what is just and what is unjust — right and wrong — doing the right and holding back from the wrong; "and that conduct," he added, "I count the finest practice for a defense a man could ask for." Hermogenes came back to the point and pleaded with him: "Don't you see, Socrates, how often an Athenian jury, swayed by clever argument, condemns innocent people to death and acquits real criminals?" "I assure you, Hermogenes," Socrates replied, "every time I have tried to turn my thoughts to the defense I am to make before the court, the divine sign has opposed me." "How strange!" Hermogenes exclaimed. "Do you find it strange," Socrates went on, "that God should judge it better for me to close my life now? Don't you know that up to this very moment I would not concede to any man that he has lived a better or a happier life than mine? The best life, I hold, belongs to those who work hardest at becoming as good as they can be, and the happiest to those who feel most keenly that they are growing in goodness — and so far, that is exactly the good fortune I see fallen to my lot. I have found it so not just in casual encounters with others, but by strict comparison between myself and others, and in that conviction I stand to this day. And not I alone: my friends hold the same conviction about me — not for the weak reason that they are my friends and love me, or every man's friends would feel the same about theirs, but because they are persuaded that keeping my company makes them better. But if I am destined to live on, I suppose I shall have to pay the penalties of old age in full: to see and hear less keenly, to fail in force of mind, to leave school — as it were — a duller student than I came, less learned and more forgetful; to fall, in short, from whatever I once stood highest in, and grow daily worse at the very things I once did best. If I couldn't feel the change, the life left over would scarcely be worth living; but given that I must feel it, then the existence left to me could only turn insipid and joyless — a death in life, stripped of everything that makes life sweet. And if it is reserved for me to die unjustly, then the shame lies on those who unjustly kill me. If injustice is shameful, how can any unjust act whatever fail to be shameful? But where is the disgrace to me if others fail to judge me justly or treat me rightly? I see before me a long line of men who have walked this road, and I see the reputations they left among posterity — how differently people speak of those who did the wrong and those who suffered it. And I know that though I die today, mankind will remember me very differently from the men who put me to death. The witness that outlives me will say this: that I never at any time wronged any man or made him worse, but always tried to make the people who kept my company better."
Such were the things he said in conversation with Hermogenes and the rest. And among those who knew Socrates and understood what kind of man he was, all who make virtue their pursuit still, to this day, miss him with the bitterest regret, as the one helper in the pursuit of virtue whom nothing can replace.
To me, personally, he was what I have tried throughout to describe: so pious and devout that he would take no step apart from the will of Heaven; so just and upright that he never did even a trifling injury to any living soul; so self-controlled, so temperate, that he never once chose the sweeter over the better; so sensible, so wise, so prudent, that in telling better from worse he never went wrong — and he needed no helper, for in these matters his own judgment was sure and sufficient. He could set out a moral question and define it with perfect clarity; he could test others, and where they went wrong, cross-examine and convict them, and so drive and guide them toward virtue and true nobility. That is my estimate of him. If the verdict fails to satisfy, I would ask anyone who disagrees to set the character of any other man beside this portrait — and then pass sentence. For of all whom I have known, he was the best and the happiest of men.