The story that Plato tells in the Phaedo has all the makings of a tragedy. A good man is accused falsely of crimes he did not commit. Circumstances make him hated of the people, and a commission from the gods leads him to do things that further alienate the people from him. He suffers condemnation and is put to death unjustly. It has all the makings of a tragedy but one: Socrates refuses to play the tragic hero. Rather than bemoan his fate, ranting and raging across the stage, he tells his companions to buck up and take his death manfully. Socrates is a new kind of tragic hero, one who does not acknowledge his own misfortunes, but perseveres courageously to the end, holding virtue of more value than his earthly status and possessions, indeed than life itself.
In his magnum opus The Republic, Plato speaks of the education of the guardians, the elite rulers of the ideal city. “What if they are to be brave? Shouldn’t those stories be told them that will make them least likely to fear death? Or do you think anyone could be brave while harboring in his heart this fear?”[19] He goes on to criticize Homer for portraying Achilles as going mad with sorrow, rolling around on the ground, sprinkling ashes on his head.[20] How unseemly for a hero such as Achilles to lose control of his emotions and throw tantrums like a child! Why should we praise the excessive behavior of tragic heroes when we condemn it in our own lives?[21] Good literature should model proper behavior, and tragic heroes most of all should act with decorum and decency.
In the Phaedo for the first time, or almost the first time, we see a hero acting with courage and self-control in the face of overwhelming calamity. Where Achilles groans and laments; where the heroes of democracy, Themistocles and later Alcibiades, desert Athens for her enemies, or, like Theramenes, point fingers in the trial of the generals after the Battle of Arginusae; Socrates stands apart as a man of principle who will not act shamefully, either to save his life or to win sympathy from a court. In the end, he remains unmoved by his own fate and confident in the justice of his cause.
Thus, Plato writes the first anti-tragedy, in which the bleakest of outcomes has no power over the hero. Whereas other individuals find themselves at the mercy of an overriding fate, Socrates is the master of his own destiny. At the end of the dialogue Meno, Socrates draws the inevitable conclusion that Greek culture had drawn from time immemorial: “On the basis of this discussion, Meno, it appears that goodness (aretē) comes to those who possess it by divine grace (theiāi moirāi).”[22] When the gods smile on us, we succeed; when they frown, we fail. But for Socrates (and Plato, the author) goodness is, in the end, not a benefaction but an achievement. Socrates does not view happiness as a reward for virtue, but sees his virtue as the substance of his happiness and success.
[19].Plato Republic 386a-b.
[20].Plato Republic 388a-b, referring to Homer Iliad 24.3-12, 18.23-24, 22.414-15.
[21].Plato Republic 605c-e.
[22].Plato Meno 100b.