What is most striking in Socrates’ private life is his moral character. And nothing is more indicative of Socrates’ moral life than his sexual life. Plato provides a glimpse of Socrates’ behavior in his dialogue The Symposium.
The occasion is a celebration for the poet Agathon in the victory of his tragedy at the Lenaea festival in 416. The participants take turns giving speeches in praise of Eros the god of love. Towards the end of the festivities, Alcibiades, drunk from a night of carousing, crashes the party with his friends. He sits down next to the victor on his couch, then finds Socrates reclining on the same couch. Alcibiades cries out that Socrates has cornered him again. Socrates, on the other hand, complains that Alcibiades is resentful of Socrates whenever he admires anyone other than himself. Alcibiades symbolically plaits a wreath for Socrates. After some bantering and drinking, the guests tell Alcibiades that he must make a speech. He launches on a speech in praise of Socrates.
“I say that [Socrates] is very much like one of those Sileni you find in the shops of statue-makers, which the artists carve holding panpipes or flutes—the ones you can open up to reveal little figurines of the gods inside. And I say he’s like the satyr Marsyas. That you look just like them, Socrates, not even you can deny.”[50] Like Marsyas, Socrates enchants people with his music. “Whenever I hear him, my heart leaps, tears gush from my eyes at his words, more than the ecstatic worshipers of Cybele, and I see many others who are similarly affected. I have heard Pericles and other distinguished speakers whom I thought spoke well, but none of them moved me like him, nor was my soul thrown into confusion nor was I made to feel like a lowly slave, except by this Marsyas here, who often makes me feel that my life, such as it is, is not worth living. You can’t deny this either, Socrates. Even now, I’m fully aware that if I let him speak, I couldn’t stop him from doing the same thing to me. He forces me to admit that in pursuing my political career I am neglecting myself and my personal flaws. So I cover my ears, as if to ward off his siren song, and I run away to avoid falling under his trance for life.
“He also affects me like no one else to feel what you wouldn’t think I was capable of: shame. He alone shames me. I’m fully aware that I can’t contradict what he tells me to do, but when I’m away from him, I give in to the will of the crowd. So I escape from his clutches, and whenever I run into him, I’m embarrassed to be reminded that I should know better.”[51]
After his true confession, he turns to Socrates. “Be sure that not one of you knows him; but I’ll let you in on his secret, now you’ve got me started. You observe him acting love-struck and hanging around beautiful boys. Also, he acts all ignorant knowing nothing. Isn’t that the perfect picture of a Silenus? Sure it is. That’s how he’s painted on the outside, like the carved Silenus figure. But if you open him up, you’ll find he’s filled, my drinking mates, with virtue. Know well that he doesn’t give a damn if you’re good-looking, but he looks down on you if you think you are, or if you’re rich or have any other claim to fame for which you are the darling of the crowd. He thinks all such distinctions are worthless and despises us—I mean you. He spends his whole life playing games and pretending. I doubt any of you has opened him up and seen the images inside the real Socrates. But I did once, and those images seemed so divine, golden, fair, enchanting, that I was ready to do anything he said.”[52]
Young though he was, the worldly and dissolute Alcibiades hatched a plan to seduce Socrates so that he might gain access to his treasures of wisdom. That is, indeed, the way of “Greek love,” for the youth to share his beauty in return for the elder’s wisdom. Alcibiades goes on to tell a comic tale of trying to entice Socrates, arranging to be alone with him, wrestling with him at the gymnasium, inviting him to dinner, inviting him to stay the night—all things the active, older partner was expected to do to win the passive young man. But alas, Socrates never laid a finger on him. Finally, Alcibiades arranged for a late-night dinner for two. He dismissed the slaves who were waiting on them and made a direct approach. He told Socrates that he was the only worthy lover Alcibiades had had, and Alcibiades would be a fool not to give himself completely to Socrates.
“Having heard me,” Alcibiades reports, “he replied in that ironic way that is his wont, ‘Dear Alciabiades, you may really be quite clever if what you say about me is true, that there is some power in me to make you better. You perceive some incredible beauty in me that’s completely different from the good looks you have. So with this in mind, if you want to have intercourse with me and trade beauty for beauty, you plan to take more than a little advantage of me. You intend to get genuine beauty for specious good looks and really to exchange gold for bronze. But, my good boy, think it over, in case you may be mistaken about me.’”
“I’ve told you exactly what I have in mind,” says Alcibiades. “Now it’s up to you decide what’s best for you and me.”
“You’re quite right. In the future we must think things through and do whatever appears to us best, concerning this and everything else.”[53]
With that Alcibiades hopefully cuddles up to Socrates on the couch. But Socrates just rolls over and goes to sleep.
In his remarkable eulogy to Socrates, sharing the naked truth that no sober man would divulge, Alcibiades reveals the strange relationship between the golden boy of Golden Age Greece and the ugly philosopher. If you could see inside them (as inside a Russian, or an ancient Greek, doll), you would find in Socrates true beauty of soul, in Alcibiades ugly self-indulgence. The story is fiction, but it reflects what Plato sees as the paradoxical attraction of two unlikes. Their outward appearances are deceptive. Alcibiades is a wolf in sheep’s clothing, Socrates a sheep in wolf’s clothing. Alcibiades calls attention to Socrates’ eirōneia, irony, dissembling, seeming to be less than he is.[54] And yet, in his own self-effacing way, Socrates is capable of pointing out his superiority to Alcibiades—if Alcibiades can just recognize this for himself, as in a way he already does.
Behind the pillow-talk, Socrates seems to hold strict views about sexual morality, such as are almost incomprehensible to his contemporaries. To think about what is best means, for Socrates, to think about what is right and wrong, moral and immoral. While he doesn’t articulate a set of dos and don’ts, as we shall see, he does arrive at moral imperatives. We see these at least in his own strict behavior in both the public and the private spheres. There is no area of life that is not for him subject to moral constraints. While he is no prude, Socrates is as self-controlled as Gandhi and as rigid in his ethics as St. Paul. Sexual conduct is not for him as it is for his contemporaries about what he can get away with, but about what he can justifiably do. In practice, Socrates is assiduously monogamous, faithful to his sometimes ill-tempered wife.
[50].Plato Symposium 215a-b.
[51].Plato Symposium 215e-216b.
[52].Plato Symposium 216c-217a.
[53].Plato Symposium 218c-219c.
[54].He uses eirōnikōs at 218d6, participle eirōneuomenos, translated “pretending,” at 216e4. See Vlastos 1991:21-44.