When did Chaerephon make his pilgrimage? It would be difficult or impossible to visit Delphi during the hostilities of the Peloponnesian War, which lasted from 431 to 404 BC. Delphi was in enemy territory and surrounded by hostile city states and ethnic groups. Furthermore, the oracle had showed itself partial to the Spartan side from the outset of the war. Thus most scholars who have examined this question have believed that Chaerephon made his trip before 431, when Socrates was 38 years old.[42] Yet Socrates was probably almost unknown, certainly outside Athens, at that early date. And if he had felt impelled to seek out the wise and prominent, as he did after hearing the oracle’s response, it is strange that we have no reliable report of an encounter between Socrates and Pericles (whose sons Socrates encounters in the house of Callias in the Protagoras).[43] It appears that the more public phase of Socrates’ career happened after 431.
Another influential interpretation is that Chaerephon went to Delphi in 421, when the Peace of Nicias provided a break in the Peloponnesian War.[44] Indeed, one of the important points of negotiation for the treaty was access for all Greeks to the Oracle at Delphi, which had been denied to Athens and her allies for so long.[45] Aristophanes had lampooned Socrates in a play in 423 (ch. 14*), which provided instant visibility for Socrates even outside Athens and provided an occasion for Chaerephon to want to promote Socrates’ reputation. As soon as he could, then, during the peace, Chaerephon hastened to the oracle to make his query. The answer, according to this interpretation, led Socrates to abandon his pursuit of natural philosophy, as presented in Aristophanes’ play, in favor of moral philosophy. Yet this account raises problems too. What Socrates gained from Aristophanes’ play was not renown but notoriety: Socrates was presented as a natural philosopher and a sophist, a fraud and a mercenary. In fact, no other ancient authority agrees with Aristophanes’ characterization of Socrates—except in his account of Socrates’ appearance—while there is evidence that Socrates was already known for his moral theory (above, ch. 9*), so that there is no reason to give credence to the comic poet’s treatment of Socrates as would-be scientist.
What needs to be explained is not how Socrates abandoned scientific pursuits, but how he came to be so visible that even a comic poet like Aristophanes would depict him on stage. Sometime between 431 and 423, Socrates became so well-known that not one, but two plays about him were produced in the very same year (as we shall see, ch. 14*). The comic stage offered an ongoing commentary on current events, both political and non-political. Socrates had already begun to be noticed in one-liners uttered from the comic stage, as we have seen (ch. 9*). Sometime before 423, Socrates caught the public eye in a way he had not done before. The pilgrimage of Chaerephon might help explain that—if only he could make the journey in the war years between 431 and 421.
There is a way. There were four great pan-Hellenic festivals in Greece that brought people together for worship, athletic competitions, and entertainment. The first and greatest was the Olympic festival, held every four years in Olympia in the Peloponnesus, where the best athletes of the Greek world competed for a crown of olive leaves—and undying fame. Begun in 776 BC, the Olympic Games became the focus of sport forever after in the ancient world, and has been revived in the modern world. Two years after each Olympic festival, the Pythian Games were celebrated in Delphi, the second most famous venue for sport. In the intervening years the Nemean and Isthmian Games were held, both near Corinth.
The ideal of the great festivals was Greek unity and peace. To that end, the magistrates of the Olympic Games famously declared a “sacred holiday” (hieromēnia) for the upcoming games, sending out heralds to the major cities of Greece to proclaim a corresponding “sacred truce” (ekecheiria) which was in force from the time the heralds arrived, in preparation for the week-long festival, and extending until the pilgrims had time to return home afterwards.[46] (The sacred truce was not a general armistice to stop all wars, but a guarantee of safe passage for participants, and a local truce for the region hosting the festival.)[47] Though there were infractions, the directors of the games were not slow to punish violations, and bar participants from guilty cities from the competitions—as the directors of the Olympic Games did to Sparta in 420 BC.[48] And such was the prestige of the games that punishments were devastating to the cities affected. In 348, an Athenian leader, Phrynon, was captured by pirates while he was sailing to the Olympic games from Macedonia. He had to pay a ransom for his release. When he was released, he sued Philip, King of Macedonia, for the repayment of the ransom—on the grounds that the king was responsible to enforce the sacred truce in his territories. Philip paid up.[49]
The organizers of the Pythian Games similarly recognized a sacred holiday, and proclaimed a sacred truce, for their festival.[50] The truce would guarantee safe conduct for pilgrims and athletes going to Delphi for the games, which were held under the auspices of the patron god of the city, Apollo. Violation of the truce would be not only an infraction of international law, but a sacrilege, and it could lead to the loss of protection for the pilgrims from the offending country. The sacred season of the Pythian Games seems to have been the longest of any festival, possibly lasting for a year.[51] Even if that is an exaggeration, international law did guarantee the safety of pilgrims and participants going to the festival. The Pythian Games were held in August of 426. During the time when the truce was in force, and probably a month or so before the celebration, Chaerephon could have gone to Delphi to make his inquiry without hindrance, probably in a company of worshipers, tourists, and athletes, for security.[52] In fact, his fellow travelers may have been the first to hear Chaerephon’s excited report of the oracle’s revelation.
After his return, Chaerephon may have been even more obnoxious and insufferable than usual, and he duly gets several notices in Aristophanes’ play.[53] Responses of the oracle seem to have been written down in a document. So, with a scroll from the god in his cloak, Chaerephon became the apostle of Socrates.
Once Socrates received the oracle with its unwelcome endorsement, he felt impelled willy-nilly to search out the meaning of the oracle. Socrates now had a sense of mission. The private man set a course that brought him inexorably into the public eye.
[42].Taylor 1917 b; Parke & Wormell 1956:1.402-403; Fontenrose 1978:34; Rudebusch 2009:33-45 has recently given a detailed elaboration of this view.
[43]. At most we hear of Socrates conversing with Aspasia, Pericles’ mistress: Plutarch Pericles 24.4; see Plato Menexenus 235e-236a, which playfully attributes Pericles’ oratorical skills to Aspasia’s instruction. For Pericles sons, see Plato Protagoras 315a, 319e-320a.
[44].Ferguson 1964; Vlastos 1991:252, n.60; earlier Herzog 1922:169, and earlier still Chiapelli 1891, esp. 383-84.
[45].Thucydides 4.118.1-2 on the peace proposal of 423, with Kagan 1974:305-306. The final terms of the Peace of Nicias, ratified in Athens in the spring of 421, confirmed free passage of pilgrims to Delphi and the autonomy of the city, Thucydides 5.18.1-2.
[46].Kyle 2007:129.
[47].Rougemont 1973:101-106.
[48].Thucydides 5.49; Kyle 2007:130.
[49].Aeschines On the False Embassy 12; Demonsthenes, hypothesis 2, sec. 3 of On the False Embassy; Dillon 1995.
[50].Alluded to in Plutarch The Obsolescence of Oracles 7 = Moralia 413d. See also IG II2, 1126 and Rougemont 1973 on the Pythia and other festivals.
[51].Rougemont 1973.
[52]. This is argued in Graham and Barney 2016.
[53]. Aristophanes Clouds 102-4, 144-47, 156-58, 503-4, 831, 1465. Dover (1968: xcv-xcvii) thinks Aristophanes may have either used Chaerephon as a character in the (original) stage version of the play or planned to use him prominently in the revised (published) version.