Socrates probably pursued his studies diligently and unobtrusively from about the age of seven to fourteen.[29] At that point his education would be finished: there was no secondary school and no higher education system available in Athens. Upon reaching puberty he would participate in another rite of passage, again at the Apaturia festival. Another sacrifice was offered, and his hair was cut and a lock offered to the gods to mark his passage to manhood and full membership in the phratry.[30]
A lad of fourteen would become an apprentice in a trade if he were from the lower classes, or become an assistant in managing the family estate if he were from the upper classes. He might even become an assistant to a gentleman richer than his father, in order to better learn what he needed to know to run an estate. The established families of Athens, and every other Greek city, were landowners who made money from rents and farming. They did not do manual labor but employed slaves, sometimes large numbers of them, for that purpose. There was serious money to be made in shipping and in the trades also, but this occupation was still not as honorable as wealth from the land. So even if a man had made a killing in a trade, he would need to acquire land to become respectable. Because Socrates’ father was a craftsman, not the owner of a large estate, Socrates needed to make his own ascent from the life of the working class to the life of leisure and independence.
A late story says that his father received an oracle cautioning him to let Socrates follow his heart and not restrain him.[31] But this story seems to belong more to the legend than to the life of Socrates.
The ultimate status symbol for the Greeks was owning a horse, which required land and a large amount of grain, much of which had to be imported, since the rocky ground of Attica could not supply all the needs of humans or horses. Owning horses was commemorated even in names: hippos, ‘horse,’ was one of the favorite stems for names: Chrysippus, “golden horse”; Hipparchus, “horseruler”; Hippocrates, “horsepower.” Even women’s names often referred to horses, as the name of Socrates’ future wife: Xanthippe, “yellow horse,” bespoke respectability. Greeks had horses’ heads carved on their tombstones to remind visitors to the cemetery of their status. They raced horses, bet on them, and otherwise centered their lives on them — if they could afford to do so. Socrates would circulate among the horse-owning class but remain a pedestrian throughout his life.
Beyond the Athens of rich and sometimes idle horsemen, there was the Athens of craftsmen. There had always been craftsmen in Greece, but never had they been so grand and glorious as they were in Socrates’ youth. In the northwest corner of the city was the Keramaikos, the Potters’ Quarter, where pottery was made. Since the previous century the Athenian potters had been the best in the Mediterranean world. They had pioneered blackfigure pottery. On a rich orange-red background of clay they painted black figures of humans, animals–especially horses–and gods, with consummate skill. They etched lines in the black masses to articulate the figures, then glazed and fired their pottery. The shapes of the pots were elegant, and the paintings divine. They were in demand all over the Greek world and even outside it, for barbarians would pay a high price in goods and raw materials to get a fine Athenian pot second-hand. The Corinthians, who had been the great potters previously, could not compete with the quality of the blackfigure vases. Some of the earliest alphabetic writing appears on blackfigure vases, sometimes in nonsensical strings of letters indicating that neither the painters nor the buyers were really literate, but pretended to be.
Around 530 BC, Athenian potters outdid themselves again when they reversed the black and red motif, painting the entire vase black and then scraping out the human and animal figures till the red clay was revealed, delicately painting gods and goddesses, athletes, warriors, and heroes. Potters often wrote names beside the figures to identify the characters they’d drawn from myth or dramas in these new redfigure vases. Or they wrote the names of the owners.
As Socrates walked through the Potters’ Quarter, he could watch the potters at their wheels, turning the masses of clay, painting and incising the surfaces before carrying them to kilns to be fired. Eventually much of this pottery made its way down to the Piraeus, where it was shipped to far-off lands to trade for other goods, or gold and silver to bring back to Athens.
The most splendid of the arts of the time was stonework, whether in the monumental architecture of the Acropolis or the graceful statuary that began to adorn the city from the marketplace to the Acropolis. There is good evidence that Socrates’ father Sophroniscus was a stonecutter. Although the immediate followers of Socrates do not portray Socrates himself as a craftsman, Plato has him trace his descent from the mythical sculptor Daedalus, who in turn was a descendant of the Ur-craftsman Hephaestus, suggesting at least that he came from a line of stonecutters.[32] Several early historians and philosophers explicitly identified Socrates’ father as a stonemason.[33] A stonecutter possessed a valuable skill, one that Solon in an early decree directed should be passed on by the artisan to his sons.[34] But to work with one’s hands, even as a skilled artisan, identified one as, quite literally, a member of the working class and disqualified one for the polite society of leisured gentlemen.
Socrates’ biggest supporters, Plato and Xenophon, were both gentlemen who would hardly honor Socrates for his lowly origins. Socrates was an example of upward social mobility in that he succeeded to a life of (perhaps self-imposed) leisure. As we shall see (ch. 5*), whether Socrates received some apprenticeship training in his youth or not, as a young adult he turned to a liberal education and away from the life of a craftsman.
Socrates’ mother, as Plato’s Socrates explains, was a “good strapping midwife,” named Phaenarete.[35] As a midwife she would enjoy a professional status, doing the work of a modern obstetrician. She would have an important standing among the women of her borough, serving the women in her area and being on call for when a woman went into labor. As a midwife, she probably did more good and less harm than most medical workers of her time.
Socrates would live his later life among the educated and well-to-do, but remained very much at home among the common people like those he grew up with, and unlike his follower Plato, he had no reservations about talking with ordinary men and even philosophizing with them.
[29].pseudo-Plato Axiochus 366d for the beginning year. See Marrou 1982:102; Beck 1964:95-96.
[30].Parke 1978:89, 91.
[31].Plutarch On the Sign of Socrates 20 = Moralia 589e-f.
[32].Plato Euthyphro 11b-c; Alcibiades I 121a; Guthrie 1962-1981:3.2:58-59.
[33].Cyril of Alexandria Against Julian 6.208 = Aristoxenus fr. 51 Wehrli, based on Porphyry and citing Aristoxenus, Timaeus, and Menedemus. Timon of Phlius calls him a stonecutter, fr. 779 Lloyd-Jones and Parsons. Duris of Samos and Demetrius of Byzantium also know him as a stonecutter: Diogenes Laertius 2.19, 20.
[34].Plutarch Solon 22.1.+*
[35].Plato Theaetetus 149a; cf. Alcibiades I 131e. But is his mother’s name an invention? It means, “Showing Virtue,” perhaps too good to be true.