Meanwhile Socrates went about his daily walks, holding impromptu conversations with his many friends and with new acquaintances as well. He felt a special connection to the divine through his daimonion, a divine sign that advised him from time to time. It did not, he assured his friends, ever tell him what to do or answer his philosophical questions. It did not speak in hexameter verses or plan his conversations for him. Rather, it came to him only to warn him against doing or saying anything that was not right.[1] It was a kind of conscience telling him what not to do. Socrates regarded it as having divine sanction, and as authoritative in its sphere. It did not, however, tell him what to think or how to act, but came only to warn him against certain courses of action. Plutarch speculates that Socrates’ sign was a “perception of a voice or else the mental apprehension of language.”[2]
We find some examples in the Socratic literature. Plato’s Socrates is told by his voice not to get up from the dressing room at the Lyceum gymnasium; shortly the sophists Euthydemus and Dionysodorus enter, along with Clinias, so that Socrates is there to participate in the conversation.[3] Socrates’ voice keeps him from participating in politics.[4] It sometimes forbids him to associate with would-be followers, or to meet with them at certain times.[5] According to Xenophon and others, Socrates uses warnings from his voice to advise his companions against following certain courses of action, and when they fail to heed him, disaster follows.[6] The voice keeps Socrates from preparing a speech for his trial.[7] According to Plato, it did not oppose the things Socrates said at his trial.[8] Through the voice Socrates had a premonition of the disaster that would befall the Athenian expedition to Syracuse.[9]
Whatever we think of the specific episodes we are told, it is clear that Socrates believed he received promptings from the gods that kept him and those who listened to him from making mistakes or coming into danger. Socrates receives divine prohibitions without knowing exactly why he is to refrain from given actions; he often comes to recognize a reason for the prohibitions later. Plato sees the daimons as intermediaries between gods and men who are able to communicate prayers to the gods and commands to mortals from the gods.[10]
Besides this one connection with the gods, Socrates seems to have lived a conventional life of pious observations. He followed traditional usages concerning sacrifices and religious holidays. He paid his devotions to the gods in the appropriate ways.[11] He also seems to have held the oracle at Delphi in reverence. He did not, however, regard it as appropriate to consult the oracle on trivial matters. He warned his friends that the oracle was not there to give them answers about things they should determine for themselves. They should not, presumably, ask the oracle to justify them in an immoral action they already knew was wrong. Nor should they ask the god to make moral decisions for them. What the god could do was to tell them things about the future they were not able to know for themselves. Yet even here, it was not right to ask for answers about success or failure when the real issue was a moral one about what it was right to do.[12]
When Chaerephon spoke breathlessly to Socrates about the word from Delphi, it did not have the effect he expected. Instead of bringing relief, joy, or a feeling of vindication to Socrates, it brought deep concern. Why should the oracle speak so about Socrates, who did not claim to be wise, but rather to lack wisdom? Was this not some dark saying like that given to Croesus, an invitation to him to expose his own folly and helplessness to the world? Would not people someday shake their heads at Socrates as they had at Croesus, and say, his naive belief in his own destiny brought about his downfall? And yet, one could not ignore the voice of the god either, as though it had nothing to say to Socrates. How could he go on as he had, a relatively obscure figure known only to his acquaintances in Athens? How could he pretend to be a nobody when the god had singled him out for his dubious attention? Indeed, it was precisely Socrates’ pious devotion to the gods that made Chaerephon’s report so challenging. The god had spoken and he could not err, however dark and ambiguous his utterance.
The oracle had said that no man was wiser than Socrates. What could the god mean? Surely there were many people wiser than Socrates. There was only one way to understand what the oracle was saying. He must find the wise and the learned, and show to his own satisfaction that they were wiser than himself. Then he could go to the oracle himself and protest that he had proved his own limitations; he could ask the oracle for a clarification or a retraction. In any case, he could not do what Croesus had done: take the oracle at face value. He must, he concluded, investigate and, as he always advised his friends, do all he could on his own before he had recourse to oracles and revelations from the gods. He would have to go on a search for the wise and gifted, those who had the reputation for wisdom. There were many whom the city held in esteem, and many who announced and advertised their own abilities. He would test them and ascertain in them the wisdom they had. He would then be in a position to refute the statement of the oracle—at least its superficial and apparent meaning—and to ask for the deeper meaning, the answer to the riddle that surely lay behind the god’s paradoxical utterance.
[1]. Plato Apology 31c-d, 40a-b. See Destrée and Smith 2005. On the role of the daimonion, see McPherran 1996: 175-246.
[2].Plutarch On the Sign of Socrates 20 = Moralia 588d, tr. De Lacy and Einarson.
[3]. Plato Euthydemus 272e-273a; for this dialogue, see ch. 18*.
[4]. Plato Apology 31c-d, Republic 496c.
[5]. Plato Theaetetus 151a; Alcibiades 105d-106a; Xenophon Symposium 8.5.
[6]. Xenophon Memorabilia 1.1.4; ps.Plato Theages 128d-129d.
[7]. Xenophon Apology 4; Memorabilia 4.8.5.
[8]. Plato Apology 40a-b.
[9]. ps.Plato Theages 129d.
[10]. Plato Symposium 202d-e.
[11].See McPherran 1996: 76-78; 149-152.
[12].Xenophon Anabasis 3.1.5-8, Parke and Wormell no. 172, Fontenrose no. H11, to be discussed below ch. 22.*