The Last Days of Socrates

“Consider this sort of question: is what is pious loved by the gods because its pious, or is it pious because it’s loved by them?”

This question Socrates poses to Euthyphro is the first step toward acknowledging that a realm of truth exists beyond what humans can access. It is not clear at this point, but by raising the question, Socrates turns attention toward the unseen and unknown. Humans strive to please the gods, their rituals, prayers, and sacrifices being a means of doing so, but they do not know for certain. Their efforts are ultimately as experimental as Socrates’s method of questioning.

“Well, then, Socrates, the part of the just that seems to me to be pious is the part concerned with tending to the gods, while the remaining part of the just seems the one concerned with tending to human beings.”

Euthyphro has arrived at a critical distinction between piety and justice, recognizing that what is owed to the gods may differ from what is owed to people. Though Socrates never explicitly states that Euthyphro might consider applying this distinction to his decision to prosecute his father, it is significant. At the outset, Euthyphro assumed that since murder causes pollution, it should be prosecuted in the court. It may be, however, that the harm pollution causes can be addressed via sacred rituals, without intervention by the court, whereas pursuing legal proceedings may do further harm to the community. It is not so easy and straightforward, Socrates shows, to understand how best to serve gods and one’s community.

“I told you before, only moments ago, Socrates, that it’s too great a task to learn exactly how it is with all these things. But this much I’ll simply say to you: that if a person knows how to speak and to act in a way that’s gratifying to the gods, whether in prayer or in sacrifice, these are the things that are pious, and these are the sorts of things that preserve both private households and the common interests of whole cities; and the things that are the opposite of gratifying are impious—the very things that overturn and destroy everything.”

Towards the end of the dialogue, it seems Euthyphro and Socrates have effectively arrived back at a beginning. Though a critical distinction has been made, it has not yielded a definition of the essence of piety, the thing that makes piety itself. Euthyphro acknowledges, perhaps in frustration, that it is not possible to know “exactly how it is with these things” (55). This is the very point Socrates makes in the Apology, that his wisdom is the wisdom of not knowing and not pretending to know, which Euthyphro does not ultimately seem to grasp.

“I ask you here and now (and it’s a just request, at least as I see it) to disregard the manner of my delivery—perhaps it won’t stand comparison, perhaps it will—and to consider just this, and give your minds to this alone: whether or not what I say is just. For this is what makes for excellence in a juryman, just as what makes an excellent orator is telling the truth.”

Socrates’s request to the jury to attend only to the content of his defense, not its presentation, affirms his claim that his only concern is to determine whether something is just. It also stands as an oblique defense against claims that he associates with sophists who make the “weaker argument the stronger” (69). If this were true of him, then Socrates would distract from the content of his speech and attempt to sway the jury with rhetorical flair and emotional appeals, which he expressly refuses to do.

“Never mind; let it go as it pleases the god, and meanwhile the law must be obeyed and a defense made.”

Just before he begins his defense in earnest, Socrates expresses his hope that his defense will succeed and his realization that the odds are against it. In the above statement, he sets aside his hope and expectations, effectively submitting to the laws of both gods (“god” singular may, in Greek imply the totality of the gods or one in particular) and people. He will accept whatever “pleases the god,” and he will obey the law and offer a defense, accepting whatever outcomes ensue (63). His statement here can be set against his position in Crito that it would be unjust for him to flout the laws to which he has submitted. 

“I should give you a picture of these wanderings of mine—these labours, as it were, that I undertook in order to leave the oracle’s response unrefuted.”

Socrates here draws on the imagery of heroes to frame his philosophical method of questioning. The most famous heroic wandering labors were those of Heracles, but they are also associated with Theseus, a hero of particular importance to Athens and whose ritual observance ultimately delays Socrates’s death, as portrayed in Phaedo. Drawing on hero language and imagery positions Socrates within traditional beliefs and behaviors but with his own unique twist: Socrates both does and does not worship according to custom.

“To this person I’ll retort, and justly, ‘You’re wrong, my man, if you think a person who’s of any use at all should take danger into account, weighing up his chances of living or dying, instead of making it the sole consideration, whenever he acts.”

Socrates’s retort above is in response to a question he anticipates: Is he ashamed to have lived a life that has led to this trial? His response is that he is not ashamed, because the only factor that should guide a citizen’s actions is whether the behave justly. Following this retort, he draws on the story of Achilles from Homer’s Iliad. Achilles was given two potential fates to choose from: He could either spurn battle, return to his home in Ithaca, and live a long but unremarked upon life, or he could fight at Troy, die there, and have his deed immortalized through epic song. As historical audiences would have known, Achilles chose to stay, avenge his companion, Patroclus, and die. In evoking this heroic myth, Socrates also suggests that bodily death may, paradoxically, lead to immortality, not only through epic but also through the recurrence of ritual honors done for heroes. In Socrates’s case, the dialogue is proposed as the “ritual honor” that immortalizes the hero.

“This is what the god tells me to do, make no mistake about it, and I don’t think you’ve ever yet benefited more from anything than you have from my service to the god. What I do, as I move around among you, is just this: I try to persuade you, whether younger or older, to give less priority and devote less zeal, to the care of your bodies or of your money than to the care of your soul and trying to make it as good as it can be.”

The “god” referenced in the above passage would seem to be Apollo, whose oracle initiated Socrates’s “wandering,” by prompting his to interpret what the god meant by referring to him as the wisest man (67). An essential feature of Socrates’s defense is to show that he is following the highest authority—the god Apollo as revealed through the Pythia at Delphi—in service to the city.

“Because if you do put me to death, you won’t easily find anyone else quite like me, attached by the god to the city, if it’s not too comic an image, as if to a horse—a big and noble horse, but one that’s rather sleepy because of its size, all the time needing to be woken up by some sort of gadfly: this is the kind of role the god gave me when he attached me to the city, and the result is that there’s never a moment when I’m not waking you up and cajoling and rebuking you, each one of you, the whole day long, settling on you wherever you may be.”

Here, Socrates justifies his annoying (to the Athenians who have put him on trial) behavior by attributing it to the gods. His analogy that he is like a gadfly portrays him as an instrument of the gods. Gods in various versions of Greek myths have been known to send gadflies to torment those they wished to punish. Hera sent a gadfly to torment Io (in her cow form) for having attracted Zeus’ attention. Zeus sent one to sting Pegasus when Bellerophon was attempting to fly up to Olympus. It is possible that Socrates is portraying himself and his philosophical method as a wake-up call to the Athenians for the unjust behavior that had led the city to the gates of ruin.

“It seemed to me that a beautiful, shapely woman in white robes came and addressed me by name, with these words: ‘Socrates, to the fertile land of Pythia on the third day shall you come.”

Socrates explains to Crito that he does not believe the Athenian ship will return from Delos on this day because of a dream he had. The woman in the dream speaks a passage that closely correlates with the Iliad 9.363. In that passage, Achilles speaks words to this effect threatening to leave Troy and return home rather than continue to fight for a commander who has insulted and dishonored him. The reference to homecoming following perceived dishonor is allusive of heroic themes.

“No I certainly have the time, and I’ll try to set it out for you; in fact, remembering Socrates always gives me more pleasure than anything, whether I’m talking about him myself or whether I’m just listening to someone else.”

Phaedo is a story within a story: Phaedo recounts the last of Socrates’s life for a friend who was absent. The key phrase in the above passage is “remembering Socrates always gives me more pleasure than anything” (119). In a ritual context, “remembering” can effectively be a form of reliving the moment, even a moment that participants did not originally experience. The ritual fuses past, present, and even future. It is more than symbolic, something like invoking the eternal. Thus, to remember Socrates may be to live him again.

“[T]he man struck me as fortunate, Echecrates, both because of his manner and because of what he said, so fearlessly and nobly did he meet his end; the thought occurred to me that the gods were smiling on him even on the way to Hades, and that, when he arrived there, too, his lot if anyone’s would be a good one.”

Here, Phaedo describes how Socrates approached death “fearlessly and nobly,” as if “the gods were smiling on him” (119). This portrayal resonates with a story Herodotus tells in book one of his Histories, in which Solon (a wise leader of Athens) describes a fortunate or blessed man as one who not only has a good life but a good death. Phaedo’s observation is another layer of hero code that Plato has woven into this story of Socrates’s death, simultaneously associating him with heroes of the past and describing him as a new kind of hero.

“Well, when Xanthippe saw us she gave out a loud cry, and said just the sort of thing that women typically do: ‘Oh, Socrates, to think that this is the last time your friends will talk to you and you to them!’”

Like Crito later in the day, Xanthippe here observes and grieves what is ending: the life of Socrates, as all know him. It is the “last time” that he and his friends will engage in a dialogue together (121). Socrates, however, does not see his death as a cause for grief because the end of his mortality is the beginning of his immortality. Neither should those close to him grieve his leaving because the end of Socrates does not mean the end of the dialogue, the gift and force that continue whether he is present or not.

“How strange it seems, friends, this thing people call ‘pleasant’, and how striking a relation it has to what seems opposite to it, the ‘painful’: the two things refuse to present themselves to a person at the same time, but if anybody pursues one of them and catches it he’s practically forced always to take the other as well; it’s as if they were two things growing out of a single head.”

In the above passage, Socrates’s chains have been removed from his legs, and as he rubs his sore legs, he remarks on the interdependence of pleasure and pain. If one did not feel pain, one could not feel pleasure. Opposites come from each other. His physical experience provides a foundational concept and launching point for his discussion of the immortality of the soul.

“So long as we have our bodies, and our souls have that sort of contamination to contend with, we’re surely never going to succeed sufficiently in acquiring this thing that we desire; and that, we declare is the truth.”

Socrates’s exploration of the soul’s immortality seems to launch, in Phaedo, from his personal experience having his leg irons removed and feeling pleasure at the relief of pain. Here, however, Socrates posits that bodily senses cannot perceive truth accurately. It can be read as contradictory, though it is also possible that Socrates is again pointing out the limits of human perception. 

“Really and truly, perhaps, moderation, justice and courage are a sort of purification from all such things, and wisdom itself is what does the purifying. So I dare say we shouldn’t underestimate the people who established the rites of initiation: when they said that whoever arrives in Hades without undergoing initiation into the rites will lie in the slime, while whoever arrives purified and initiated will dwell with the gods, all the time they were using riddles to hint at the truth.”

This passage demonstrates the way Socrates’s teachings simultaneously reinforce and subvert traditional Athenian religion. Socrates admits the importance of purification, but via a different process and for a different purpose than traditionally. Where the state of the physical body is the focus of purification traditionally, Socrates’s focus is on purifying the soul for its separation from the body. 

“I think it’s because they belong to Apollo and so have the power of prophecy, which gives them foreknowledge of the benefits of being in Hades and makes them happier on the day they die than they’ve ever been before. And I regard myself, too, as a fellow slave with the swans, sacred to the same god, no worse than they are at using the gift of prophecy we have from our master, and leaving life in no worse humour than they do.”

Here, Socrates responds to one of followers, Simmias, referring to Socrates’s impending death as his “present misfortune” (153). The swans sing “more insistently and more loudly” as death approaches because they look forward to returning to Apollo, the god to whom they belong, knowing that good things await them (153). Likewise, Socrates’s final dialogue with his followers is emphatic and urgent as he attempts to convey to them the confidence he has in the soul’s immortality and the good things that await the purified soul.

“Today’s the day,’ he replied, ‘that you and I both should be cutting off our hair, at any rate if our argument dies and we can’t bring it back to life.”

In this section, Phaedo is recounting for Echecrates how respectful and encouraging Socrates was with his followers, who became increasingly distressed the time for him to drink the hemlock grew closer. Cutting one’s hair was a way to express grief, but Socrates tells Phaedo that they should only but their hair if their “argument dies” and cannot be revived. The death they should fear is not that of the body but that of the dialogue.

“[I] do insist that all beautiful things are beautiful by virtue of the beautiful.”

Socrates’s statement here alludes to the essence of beauty that is both a thing in itself (“the beautiful”) and present in all things that participate in being beautiful. The essence of the thing itself is what Plato later calls a form, the perfect ideal that is beyond the reach of human senses. In Phaedo, it becomes a central feature of Socrates’s argument for the immortality of the soul. 

“Well, to insist that these things are as I have described them is not appropriate for a man of intelligence; but that this or something like it is true about our souls and the places in which they dwell, given that the soul is clearly something immortal—this it does seem to me to be worth insisting on, and worth risking, for someone who thinks it to be so; the risk, after all, is a fine one. Such are the charms, as it were, that one must use on oneself, which is why I myself have long since been spinning out my story.”

In this passage, Plato portrays Socrates consistent with his position that a wise man does not profess to know what he does not know. Socrates cannot prove that he is correct in these matters; he can only examine his evidence in the dialogue. The “story” that he has been spinning out is a source of debate, as it can seem that Socrates is now turning to myth in the traditional sense. Alternately, the “story” Socrates refers to may here be the dialogue, which is the subject of a “story” that Phaedo is telling Echecrates.

“Everything I’ve been talking about all this time—about how, when I drink the poison, I’ll no longer be with you but will be off and away to some happiness or other of the blest, all of this I think he thinks I’m saying to no purpose, and just using it to comfort you at the same time as comforting myself.”

Crito has been questioning Socrates about what he would like his followers to do for him after he has died, the very cares about which Socrates has expressed unconcern. He asserts that philosophers must approach death lightly, yet Crito wishes him to extend his time in his body. He does not wish his followers to grieve, yet they weep noisily. Socrates’s statement above may be expressing how difficult it is to be a true philosopher. He reminds Crito that this is not a mere posture on Socrates’s part. He believes that when his soul leaves his body, he will be moving on to a “blest” place, a potential allusion to the Isle of the Blessed where heroes spend their afterlives (194).

“[Y]ou must guarantee that I won’t stay when I die, but will be off and away, so that Crito may bear it more easily and won’t be upset for me when he sees my body going up in flames or being buried, thinking that something terrible is happening to me, or say at my funeral that it’s Socrates he’s laying out or carrying to the grave or putting into the ground.”

As the moment for Socrates to drink the hemlock draws near, and Crito becomes distressed, Socrates addresses the inappropriateness of his distress by both drawing on and subverting traditional hero narratives. In hero cult, the body of the hero seemed to have a potential talismanic significance, a concept suggested in Athenian tragedies like Sophocles Oedipus at Colonus. Here, Socrates gestures at that significance via his reference to his body “going up in flames” (one way a hero’s mortality could be burned away) or being joined with the earth (194). With Socrates, however, his body is not the gift he gives to his people; rather, his gift is his philosophical process.

“I imagine we’re permitted to say a prayer to the gods, and we should—that our removal from this to that other place may be attended by good fortune.”

In his last moment, Socrates again thinks of the gods and what they are owed. This reaffirms, to the end, Socrates’s assertion from his defense that the work he did was a divine mission. Despite the unorthodox methods that set him apart, his prayers demonstrate both his piety (correct behavior with respect to the gods) and just behavior (correct behavior with respect to humans), as he is reminding his followers of proper conduct. Piety and the just are inextricably connected.