The Socratic movement had immediate repercussions, as we shall see, resurrecting Socrates and keeping him at the center of intellectual debates for the succeeding century.  Whereas Socrates was well known as a wise man prowling the streets of Athens, few Athenians actually had the pleasure, or displeasure, of answering his questions and interacting with him.  Now everyone had a front-row seat, virtually, to his conversations, and people could judge for themselves whether he was a good or bad influence. 

            But while the many dialogues showed Socrates in a favorable light and distanced him from the Sophists and the natural philosophers who were his rivals, schisms began to emerge within the movement.  What exactly was Socrates all about, and how in fact was he able to inculcate virtue into his followers?  He talked with anyone who would listen, and he asked questions.  But did he have answers?  Did he have some doctrine?  Did he have a method that he used in his inquiries, or was his search for wisdom haphazard?  What exactly were his followers getting from their experience with him? 

            Aeschines presents Socrates as an inspired friend, but not a systematic inquirer or even an intellectual.  Antisthenes, who was perhaps the oldest of Socrates’ followers and one of the poorest, imitated Socrates’ shabby dress style and viewed Socrates as devoted to an ascetic lifestyle and rigorous physical training in self-control.  Aristippus of Cyrene in north Africa (a Greek colony in modern-day Libya) was a lover of pleasures and a kind of dilettante philosopher who found a kindred spirit in Socrates’ casual enjoyment of everyday pleasures.  Phaedo of Elis shows Socrates gathering in the workshop of Simon the shoemaker in downtown Athens to have friendly conversations with the hoi polloi and the rude mechanicals.  Euclides was apparently interested in dialectic, and may have found in Socrates the seeds of a new emphasis on logic and theoretical rigor.  He seems to have subscribed to the unity of virtue and goodness as the goal of all action, which suggest a commitment to a theoretical approach to ethics. 

Xenophon, as we shall see, reflected the views of several of the other Socratics, but included in his picture of Socrates the notion of a dedicated friend and benefactor, a benevolent advisor and boon companion.  His Socrates is a moralist who will lecture his followers and his rivals on their duties and responsibilities. 

Plato, as we shall see, will find behind Socrates’ self-effacing presentations a powerful method using logic, a basic psychology, and a sophisticated value theory and ethics with revolutionary implications. 

            The common cause that seems to have marked the Socratic movement in the first decade after Socrates’ death was weakened by fissures and then schisms that eventually led to whole new schools of thought.  The Cynic school would see Antisthenes as their conduit to Socrates; and not long after, the Stoics would see themselves as a breakoff from the Cynics.  A theory of hedonistic ethics would arise in Cyrene, seeing Aristippus as their forebear.  From Euclides and his associates would emerge the Megarian school, with an interest in logic and technical philosophy.  And ultimately Plato would be the founder of the Academy with its theory of Platonism and various incarnations from Academic philosophy to Neoplatonism, as well as Aristotle’s Lyceum, arising from the most gifted student of Plato. 

            In short, the One would become Many, as Socratic philosophy, originally embodied in the idiosyncratic genius of a garrulous gadfly would blossom into competing schools with incommensurable visions of their common founder and rival approaches to the good life.