Socrates’ friends came to visit him every day he was in prison. They gathered at dawn at the courtroom where he had been tried and waited until the prison, which was located nearby, was open for visitors. The prison opened at a time that was “not early,”[1] but as the Athenians had no effective way of telling time more precisely than by positions of the sun or stars, there was no set time for the prison’s opening.
On the day after the sacred boat arrived from Delos, the friends gathered earlier than usual, knowing that it was Socrates’ last day on earth. It was, if ancient reports are reliable, the 6th of Thargelion, the beginning the two-day festival of Thargelia (after which the eleventh Athenian month, counting from the summer solstice, was named; roughly mid-May to mid-Jun), a festival commemorating the births of the divine twins Artemis and Apollo on Delos.[2]
In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo, we hear the honor roll of Socrates’ friends who attended, as well as who of his inner circle were absent. Apollodorus was there; Crito was present with his son Critobulus; Hermogenes, Epigenes, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Ctesippus, and Menexenus were with them. Plato was said to be ill. Of foreigners, Simmias, Cebes, and Phaedondas of Thebes were present, as well as Euclides and Terpsion of nearby Megara. Aristippus of Cyrene (in North Africa) and Cleombrotus were on the nearby island of Aegina.[3] So a total of fourteen friends came to visit Socrates on the last day, probably accompanied by some servants. Of those in Socrates’ circle, several would become authors of (now lost) Socratic dialogues commemorating their master: Phaedo, Aeschines, Antisthenes, Simmias, Cebes, Euclides, and Aristippus, not to mention Plato and Xenophon who were absent.[4]
At the appropriate time, the friends went to the prison a short walk from the marketplace. The prison has been identified with the Poros building just off the marketplace.[5] “When we arrived and the porter, who usually attended us, told us to wait and not go in until he called. ‘For the Eleven,’ he said, ‘are loosing Socrates and making arrangements for his death today.’ Not much later he returned and invited us to enter. As we entered we found Socrates having just been loosed from the chains, and Xanthippe—you know her of course—sitting next to him with their little child on her lap.
“As she saw us, Xanthippe burst into tears and said the sorts of things women always say, ‘O Socrates, this is the last time your friends will speak with you and you with them!’ Socrates, addressing Crito, said, ‘Crito, have someone take her home.’ And some of Crito’s company led her away, weeping and beating her breast.”[6] Socrates’ wife was the first to visit Socrates, with their youngest son. The conditions described seem consistent with what is known of the prison of Athens, in which visiting was allowed and indeed perhaps friends and family members were responsible for feeding and ministering to the needs of inmates.[7]
Socrates sits up and rubs his ankles where the shackles were attached, and observes that pleasure and pain are closely connected, with pleasure following in the wake of pain. Cebes has heard from Evenus that Socrates has been writing poetry in the prison and asks him why he should take up literature now. Socrates answers that he is not trying to compete with the poets, but he has undertaken the effort in response to certain dreams he has had.
“Often in the past the same dream has visited me, sometimes appearing in one guise, sometimes in another, saying the same things: ‘Socrates,’ it said, ‘compose and perform art.’ Previously I considered the dream to urge and encourage me to keep doing what I was doing, like those who cheer on a runner in a race. Thus the dream was telling me to do what I was doing, compose art, inasmuch as philosophy is the greatest work of art, and that’s just what I was doing. But now that the trial has taken place and the god’s festival prevented my execution, it seemed prudent for me, in case the dream was commanding me literally to compose art, to obey it and compose. For it is safer not to depart before I have absolved myself in obedience to the dream by composing poetry.”[8] Accordingly, Socrates composed a poem in honor of the god of the Thargelia, namely Apollo.[9] He then set about putting some of the fables of Aesop into verse.
In this brief episode we see Socrates engaging in an artistic endeavor that is very uncharacteristic. His efforts are motivated by a divine sign—not the daimonion, but a recurrent dream. Whereas he says the daimonion never tells him what to do but only warns him what not to do, Socrates recognizes other signs that can advise him what to do. He has to interpret these signs, and only recently has he come to suspect that he should take the dream more literally than he has previously. This episode does not obviously tie into the literary and philosophical themes of the Phaedo and seems the more likely to represent an experience Socrates had in his final days.
[1].Plato Phaedo 59d.
[2].Diogenes Laertius 2.44 with White 2000: 154-157; cf. Xenophon Memorabilia 4.8.2. In some versions of the myth, Artemis was born on the 6th and Apollo on the 7th of Thargelion. See also Athenaeus The Deipnosophists 10.24.20-25.
[3].Plato Phaedo 59b-c.
[4].See the several philosophers in Diogenes Laertius 2. Xenophon of course was abroad, never to return to Athens (ch. 22*). Seventeen dialogues ascribed to Crito (Diogenes Laertius 2.121) are probably bogus: Nails 2002: 115-116.
[5].Vanderpool 1980, followed by Wycherley 1978: 46-47 and Camp 1986: 113-116; to the contrary, Hunter 1997:319-323.
[6].Plato Phaedo 59e-60b.
[7].Hunter 1997.
[8].Plato Phaedo 60b-61b.
[9].Parke 1978: 147.