Socrates’ borough or deme was Alopece, located in the immediate suburbs of Athens to the southeast.[35] In his constitutional reforms of 508 BC, Cleisthenes identified and distributed the hundred and thirty-nine demes among ten administrative “tribes,” replacing four mutually hostile kinship tribes. He designed the new mapping to break up family dynasties and regional interest groups, so as to force people from different regions of Attica to work together (ch. 2*).[36] The new tribes were given important political functions; for instance, each tribe annually elected a general to serve as one of the commanders of the Athenian armed forces for that year. Each tribe also contributed fifty members to the Council every year, and each deme received proportionate representation within their tribe’s cohort of members. Socrates’ Alopece, belonging to the tribe of Antiochis, sent ten citizens to the Council annually.[37] Socrates himself would serve his deme as a Council representative in the year 407/6 BC (see ch. 19*).
After the deme system was configured based on the geographical location of boroughs in Attica, one’s membership in it became hereditary. Consequently, the son always belonged to the deme of his father, even if he moved to another location and resided within the geographical boundaries of a different deme. In reality, however, people tended to remain in the same villages for centuries, as was often the case in Europe before recent times.[38] Socrates’ deme in the suburbs of Athens was convenient for a man who frequented the city streets, so it seems likely that he continued to live in his ancestral home in Alopece.
When he was eighteen, Socrates was presented to the demarch or borough chairman as a candidate for citizenship. Since the city of Athens kept no vital records, family members and close acquaintances had to swear that he had reached his eighteenth birthday. They also had to swear that his father was a citizen. In the year that Socrates came of age, Pericles pushed through a bill that required that not only a man’s father, but also his mother must be Athenian in order to qualify for citizenship. Socrates must have met the more stringent requirement, for his name was duly entered in the deme’s register of youth eligible for citizenship. After the deme certified Socrates and his age-mates, they sent the records to the Council, which conducted a review (dokimasia) to verify that the information was correct.[39] After this last step, Socrates would have become a citizen and, therefore, eligible to participate in civic processes, except those with an age requirement. For instance, to hold some offices a citizen must have attained the age of thirty. Public records henceforth would certify his age and thus eligibility for office — and for military service.
Hereafter he was officially known by his “demotic” name, Socrates of Alopece, a designation meant to identify citizens with their boroughs more closely than with their families, so as to counteract the powerful influence of family groups (indicated by the patronymic, for instance, Socrates son of Sophroniscus) on the politics of the city.[40]
Socrates now became a cadet or ephebe (ephēbos), subject to military training and assignment. In the fourth century, cadets received rigorous military training, performed in parades and exhibitions and served in garrisons around the city for two years.[41] Spartan cadets had received rigorous military and survival training from an early time. It is not clear, however, how much formal training Socrates received in his time as a cadet in mid-fifth-century Athens. He may have served on garrison and patrol duty in the city and the borders of Attica but with little formal training.[42]
Fortunately for Socrates, around 451 when he’d come of age, Cimon was invited to return early to Athens from his exile and negotiated a five-year truce with the Spartans whom the great statesman favored (see ch. 2*).[43] Cimon then led an expedition to raid Persian territory in Egypt and Cyprus while Socrates was still serving at home as a cadet. About the time Socrates finished his two-year training, Cimon died and a treaty was negotiated with the Persian Empire, initiating a period of relative peace for several years.[44]
As Socrates completed his military training, after having finished his brief formal education some years before, he succeeded at the age of twenty to the estate of an independent citizen in 449. He came of age just at the time when a thoroughgoing democracy was being instituted in Athens for the first time. Socrates would continue his education by participating in a government that called on the talents of all its citizens to carry out its business. As we shall see, Socrates never aimed at political leadership, but he could not escape holding offices or, in what was considered an equally political responsibility, participating in the armed services of Athens.
In Socrates’ time, Athens led the Greek world in drawing on the talents of all its citizens to govern the city. As Pericles would say some eighteen years later in his famous funeral oration, speaking of the comprehensive Athenian experience with excusable pride, “In summary, I declare that our whole city is the school of Greece.”[45]
[35].See {Traill 1975}, Map 1.
[36].Aristotle Constitution of Athens 21;{Traill 1975:73-103};{Whitehead 1986:16-20}; Strabo 9.1.16.
[37].{Whitehead 1986:373}.
[38].Thucydides 2.16.1.
[39].Aristotle Constitution of Athens 42.1-2;{MacDowell 1978:69-70};{Todd 1993:180}.
[40].Aristotle Constitution of Athens 21.4.
[41].Aristotle Constitution of Athens 42.3-5.
[42].Thucydides 1.105.4; 2.13.6-7; Xenophon Memorabilia 3.12.5; Plato Laches 181e-182b;{van Wees 2004:91-93}.
[43].Plutarch Cimon 17.6-18.1.
[44].Thucydides 1.112.1-4; on the Peace of Callias see above, ch. 2*.
[45].Thucydides 2.41.1.