Plato, for his part, wrote at a momentous time when society was making a transition from an oral to a literate culture. He was the follower of an oral philosopher who needed someone with pen to tell his mentor’s story to a broader audience. Plato was that man. Plato himself, however, was ambivalent about the change from oral to literate culture and worried that writing would replace memory and undermine thinking—while he was building an incomparable temple to literate culture in composing artful dialogues portraying oral conversations.[62] In this transition period the young were trained to memorize long passages of literature, as they became accustomed to preserving information in written texts.
Plato himself prefaces one dialogue with an account of how the conversation was written down and preserved—a fictional way of framing the dialogue, no doubt, but indicative of the new literate culture.[63] Another long dialogue is said to have been memorized by repeated practice.[64] Speeches in particular were preserved in writing around the time of the Apology and formed a popular genre of literature.[65] None of this proves that Plato preserved the substance of Socrates’ actual speech, but the parallels indicate that there were no obstacles to his doing so, and the content of the speech Plato records is consistent with the issues that were argued in the actual trial.
One other interesting fact helps resolve the debate. Xenophon mentions the existence of plural versions of Socrates’ speech, and skeptics of Plato’s Apology emphasize the fact.[66] And in fact we do have lists of the titles of dialogues written by the other followers of Socrates. Even if their works are lost, and we find no other contemporary works that purport to present the speech of Socrates at his trial. Of early works representing Socrates’ defense, we know of only Plato’s Apology; Xenophon’s Apology (probably written much later); a speech by Lysias, who was reacting to Polycrates’ later criticisms, not to the actual trial; and a speech by Theodectes, a fourth-century playwright.[67]
What this seems to indicate is that the only primary written account of the trial that ever existed was that of Plato. The fact that his fellow Socratics, many of them personal witnesses of the trial, and later literary and philosophical rivals of Plato, never tried to pen an Apology of their own, hints at something of the stature that Plato’s text enjoyed, presumably from the time of its publication. Only Xenophon, absent from the city at the time and forever after, tried to improve on Plato, years later, in his pious but unphilosophical rescript.[68]
Let me add one speculative but, I think, plausible historical hypothesis. From what we know of Polycrates, the sophist was not highly original or clever.[69] It seems likely that his work was inspired by another composition presenting the trial of Socrates, and that could only be Plato’s. This puts Plato’s Apology within about five years of the event it reports, at a time when many of Socrates’ followers and Plato’s former associates were writing Socratic dialogues.[70] Indeed, the post-trial speech of Socrates in the Apology presents the situation aptly: “More people will arise to examine you, people I’ve restrained until now, unbeknownst to you. They will be tougher on you for being younger, and you will be more offended at them than at me. But if you think killing me will keep people from correcting you for your depraved way of life, you’re sadly mistaken.”[71] At the time of composition the prophecy was a fait accompli. In this setting there were many witnesses to the trial, and many potential critics of Plato’s memorial of it. The only strong reaction we know of against Socrates after the trial was that of a young rhetorician on the make, who used it to launch his career as a politically savvy commentator: Polycrates’ Accusation of Socrates sparked a new round of debate about Socrates’ political beliefs and his relations with influential political figures (see below, ch. 33*). But those who were in the best position to know what went on at the trial, the Socratics who had gathered to the courtroom to support their master, never challenged Plato’s depiction of the famous speech. One scholar notes, “we cannot find a shred of doubt in the ancient world about the historical authenticity of Plato’s Apology.”[72]
In the end we cannot say how much Plato may have reshaped Socrates’ defense speech. We can observe that the text as Plato produced it is historically appropriate and biographically sound. It had no rival for decades after the event. We can also conclude that we will never approach closer to Socrates’ own apologia pro vita sua than through Plato’s re-creation of it. And, for better or worse, Plato’s dialogue became Socrates’ defense before the court of public opinion, first in Athens, then in Greece, then in the Roman Empire, and subsequently in the modern world.
Before the end of the fourth century BC, Socrates emerged as a culture hero in Greece, and Plato was his spokesman.
[62].Plato Phaedrus 275a-276a. On Plato in relation to oral and written culture, see Havelock 1963; Nails 1995.
[63].Plato Theaetetus 143a-b.
[64i].Plato Parmenides 126b-127a.
[65].Munn 2000: 296-303 discusses the rise of written records of speeches and conversations.
[66].Xenophon Apology 1; Waterfield 2009: 9-10.
[67].For Lysias: Diogenes Laertius 2.40-41; Cicero The Orator 1.231; ps.Plutarch Lives of the Ten Orators = Moralia 836b; scholia to Aelius Aristides 187.20 et passim; Blass 1887-1898, 1: 351; Chroust 1957: 20 and n. 88. On Lysias’ family connections with Socrates, see ch. 21* above. For Theodectes, Aristotle Rhetoric 1399a7-9; Plutarch Alexander 17.4-5; Suda s.v. Theodektēs.
[68].Vander Waerdt 1993: 1 argues that “Xenophon wrote his Apology of Socrates directly in reply to Plato’s work of the same title.”
[69].Isocrates Busiris 1-9. To be sure, Isocrates is patronizing him and trying to outdo the newcomer, but he does find his work second-rate.
[70]. Many scholars believe Plato’s Apology was written soon after the event. One serious challenge is that of Ledger 1989: 217-218, who on the basis of stylometric evidence would put it in the 380s; but on several criteria (pp. 171-74) it comes out earlier. In any case, the Crito, which Ledger validates as early, seems to allude to the Apology: Plato Crito 52c.
[71].Plato Apology 39d.
[72].Kraut 2000: 13. This seems to overlook Xenophon’s apparent attempt to impugn Plato’s account; but I think Xenophon only succeeds in exposing the shortcomings of his own account by comparison. Further, Colotes and Athenaeus questioned the authenticity of the oracle story (Plutarch Against Colotes 1116e-f; Athenaeus 5.218e-f, with Dorion 2012: 421); but both of these criticisms came long after the trial, and most ancient authors accepted the veracity of Plato’s version of the speech, including Plutarch himself (Against Colotes 1116f).