Achilles, Socrates, and Democracy

Achilles, Socrates, and DemocracyAuthor(s): Richard HolwaySource: Political Theory, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov., 1994), pp. 561-590Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/192040Accessed: 19-09-2016 15:12 UTC

REFERENCES Linked references are available on JSTOR for this article:http://www.jstor.org/stable/192040?seq=1&cid=pdf-reference#references_tab_contents You may need to log in to JSTOR to access the linked references.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted

digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about

JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at

http://about.jstor.org/terms

Sage Publications, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to PoliticalTheory

This content downloaded from 137.54.22.173 on Mon, 19 Sep 2016 15:12:16 UTCAll use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms

ACHILLES, SOCRATES, AND DEMOCRACY

RICHARD HOLWAY

University Press of Virginia

Socrates: Euthyphro, you think that you have such accurate knowledge of things divine,

and what is holy and unholy, that ... you can accuse your father? You are not afraid that

you yourself are doing an unholy deed?

Euthyphro: Why Socrates, if I did not have an accurate knowledge of all that, I should be good for nothing, and Euthyphro would be no different from the general run of men.

(Euthyphro, 4e-5a)1

L ACHILLES'EXAMPLE

In 399 B.C. Anytus, a leader in the restoration of Athenian democracy four

years earlier, joined with two obscure countrymen to charge Socrates with impiety and corrupting the young. Plato's account of Socrates' trial and execution is both a defense of his beloved teacher and an indictment of democratic Athens. On trial for his life, Plato's Socrates invokes Achilles as an exemplar of the courage he himself must display in pursuing his philosophical vocation. As with Achilles, so with Socrates: fear of death will never induce him to abandon his post. Despite the threat of execution, he will pursue

his god-appointed task of leading the philosophical life, of examining himself

and others (Apol. 28b-29a, 24b). But Socrates and his vocation are so antithetical to Achilles and his that the comparison seems freighted with irony.

Socrates mounts a two-pronged defense. First, his philosophic activities are extraordinarily pious. Second, his accusers' motives are impure. In support of these contentions, Socrates gives an account of his activities and how they led to his indictment.

Puzzled by the declaration of Apollo's oracle at Delphi that no one is wiser

than he, Socrates decides to investigate the god's meaning by examining the men who have the greatest reputations for wisdom: politicians, dramatists,

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 22 No. 4, November 1994 561-590

C 1994 Sage Publications, Inc.

561


562 POLITICAL THEORY / November 1994

orators-anyone with a claim to superior knowledge. His public questioning of these men reveals that, although they believe themselves wise, in fact they

are not. From this, Socrates concludes that all mortals are basically ignorant,

but that he is wiser than other reputedly wise men because he recognizes his ignorance (20c-23c).

Loathe to admit that they are angry at Socrates for demonstrating that they

literally do not know what they are talking about when it comes to virtue or

the good of the city, and envious of him-presumably because he has been

singled out by Apollo as the wisest of men-these influential men concoct

slanderous charges against him: impiety (asebeias), believing in deities of

his own invention instead of the gods recognized by the state, and corrupting

the young (Apol. 23d-e, 24b; envy [phthonos], 28a, 35d; cf. Euthyphro, 5c). In rebuttal, Socrates likens himself to a divinely appointed gadfly, exhorting

the Athenians to care for truth and the perfection of their souls more than for

wealth, honor, and power. They are like a lazy thoroughbred that needs the

stimulation of a fly's stinging bite. Although the Athenians should treasure him as Apollo's greatest gift to them, Socrates suspects that they will take the

advice of one of his accusers, Anytus, and swat him dead (30a-3 1a). Coura-

geously refusing to abandon his calling or to flee, he thus becomes a martyr to public truth telling.

This heroic gadfly, who innocently goes about the god's business and as

a result is charged with impiety and corrupting the young, may indeed be modeled on Achilles-not the brave warrior who prefers death to disgrace, however, but a seemingly aberrant, "public" Achilles of Iliad 1, who inter-

venes to save the army from a plague sent by Apollo. Already in Homer,

Achilles is more than a stereotypical glory-seeking, insult-avenging hero.

Granted, he epitomizes these traits, but precisely because of this he can become the vehicle for exploring the problematic quality, for his society and

for himself, of heroic values that Archaic and even Classical Greeks, like

Achilles himself, tended to take for granted.2

In Achilles' case, dominant heroic values of honor and revenge come into

conflict with less obvious commitments to self-sacrifice in the service of

others that, when he violates them, turn out to be no less imperative. The

preeminent hero of the Iliad not only pursues his own glory; he risks his life

daily to restore the honor of others. Agamemnon's insult provokes Achilles

to articulate the helping role about which, until then, he had maintained a

tactful silence: Achilles came to Troy not on his own behalf, but "for [Agamemnon's] sake," to "do [him] favor" by winning back from the Trojans the honor of Agamemnon and his brother Menelaos, who regards himself as

covered with "shame and defilement" by Paris's seduction of his wife

(1.157-60, 13.623-4). Even the glory that Achilles pursues so single-mindedly


Holway / ACHILLES, SOCRATES, AND DEMOCRACY 563

may be as much a consolation for his mother, shamed and humiliated by her marriage to a mortal, as a prize for himself.3 Achilles also excels over other

heroes in risking his life "to beat death away from his companions" (1.341, 9.322-6; cf. 18.129). When he finally realizes how much his vengeful refusal to fight has cost his beloved comrades, he ordains his own death as a penalty (I18.98_-104).4

Achilles' very ability to "outshine all others" is linked to a complementary

self-effacement, although here too, he can acknowledge his sacrifice only in hostile retrospect. In the past, Achilles silently acquiesced in a distribution of spoils in inverse proportion to his and Agamemnon's actual deserts: Agamemnon amassed undeserved riches while Achilles contented himself

with something "small but dear" (1.164-8). With this apparent self-denial, no

less than by avenging Paris's insult to the sons of Atreus, does Achilles preserve their honor.5 Once again Agamemnon's ingratitude provokes Achilles to break his silence, and once again Achilles seems completely justified. Nonetheless, I will argue, his obligation to neutralize the threat he poses to the honor of fathers and kings turns out to be no more easily set aside

than his obligation to beat death away from his companions. By exploring conflicts between dominant values of glory and revenge and

countervailing obligations to authorities and communities, Homer completed the transformation of a simple tale of revenge for dishonor into a great, prototragic epic. That he did so when the primary unit of Greek society was

shifting from the aristocratic clan to the nascent polis is probably no coinci-

dence.6 In the course of exploring these conflicts among competing values, moreover, Homer lays the groundwork for Plato's portrayal of Socrates. When we take the other-regarding and community-regarding side of Achilles'

character into account, Socrates' reference to Achilles as an exemplar appears far more telling, far less ironic, than it at first seems.7

Not only undercurrents of character-Achilles' sense of responsibility for his fellows' well-being and Socrates' heroic intransigence-but also similar narrative patterns narrow the gap between Achilles and Socrates. The story of Achilles' conflict with Agamemnon adumbrates Plato's account of Socrates'

conflict with the Athenian demos and its leaders. Although Achilles epitomizes the competitive striving for honor that, for many writers, betokens the

absence of "cooperative virtues" or interior conscience in Archaic culture generally, he is nonetheless drawn into the public arena by a community- threatening crisis.8 Agamemnon insults a priest of Apollo and stands idly by while a plague sent by the god decimates his army. Pitying the Achaians, Zeus's wife, Hera, sends Athena to persuade Achilles to convene the public assembly, at which he shames Agamemnon into returning the priest's captive daughter and appeasing Apollo with a sacrifice.9



When Socrates braves the anger of Athens' leaders to heed a divine

command that he save his fellow Athenians, he follows in the footsteps of

Achilles, who risks the anger of a powerful king in a divinely prompted

attempt to save his community (1.178-83). As Socrates' actions will do, Achilles' actions in service of the community assert Apollo's claims to honor in the face of mortal authorities' hubris. The Achaians had urged Agamemnon

to honor Apollo by acceding to the request of his priest, but Agamemnon abused the old man and mocked the god's ability to protect his servant (1.21,

25-32, 28; hubris, 1.203, 214). Achilles, by contrast, was "the first to urge the

god's appeasement" (1.386).1o As Socrates' will be, Achilles' altruism and piety are brushed aside as mere

pretense. Achilles' innocent claim to be discovering the cause of the divine

anger that threatens to destroy his community does not fool Agamemnon. Do

not "strive to cheat, for you will not deceive," he warns. According to Agamemnon, unbridled ambition lies behind Achilles' pose of disinterested

concern for his fellows' well-being. Does Achilles wish to strip Agamemnon of honors and give him orders (1. 131-34)? The question is rhetorical. Achilles

"wishes to be above all others/ ... to hold power over all and to be lord of/

all and give them their orders" (1.287-99). As Socrates' accusers will do, Agamemnon rationalizes Achilles' unjust punishment as necessary to deter

others: "so that another man"-possibly a hotheaded youth like Diomedes or

his charioteer, Sthenelos (4.365-419, 9.31-62)-"may shrink back from likening himself to [Agamemnon] and contending against" him (1.186-87).

Just as Agamemnon is a prototype for Socrates' accusers, so Homer's

implicit defense of Achilles prefigures Socrates' explicit self-defense. The knowledge that Achilles upholds Apollo's honor and is inspired by divine

pity to come to the aid of his fellow Achaians makes the king's accusations

against his half-divine subaltern appear to arise from a source other than his

avowed concern to instill proper respect for divinely sanctioned authority. Perhaps Agamemnon's hostility can be explained in the same way as Socrates' accusers': he is angry at having his shortcomings publicly exposed, or he

envies the incomparable son of the goddess Thetis.

When the Athenians, whom Socrates labors to save, abandon him to his

fate, they mimic Homer's Achaians. Unlike the Athenian jurors, the Achaians acquiesce rather than join in Agamemnon's condemnation of Achilles, but

Achilles' bitterly ironic characterization of them as dikaspoloi who "admin-

ister the justice (themistas) of Zeus" (1.238-39) nonetheless foreshadows

Socrates' refusal to accord the title of dikast (juror) to the Athenians who vote

to convict him.1" As will be shown, Socrates' shift from lashing out at his accusers to self-condemnation and self-ordained death also follows Achillean precedent.



Because despite his intervention to save the army from the plague, Achilles

remains the stereotypical honor-seeking, dishonor-avenging hero whom Socra-

tes invokes in the Apology, however, it is understandable that Plato overlooks

the affinity between Socrates as gadfly and the aberrant, public-spirited Achilles of Iliad 1. Even in his altercation with Agamemnon, Achilles' wrath

is kindled more by the slight to his honor in Agamemnon's seizure of his prize

girl than by Agamemnon's unkingly failure to give up his concubine so that his "people be safe, not perish" (1.117), and for all the sacrifices Achilles makes on behalf of his comrades, he nearly destroys the army in his pursuit of revenge against Agamemnon. After a brief interlude in which he serves as

the agent of Hera's maternal concern for the Achaians-who, in any case, like Achilles himself, are agents of Hera's revenge on the Trojans (24.25-30, 420-36)-Achilles apparently reverts to type. He goes back to being a stereotypical hero who cares only about his own honor. Thus Socrates could

have followed in the footsteps of an evanescent public Achilles, or Plato may

have built Socrates' story on Achilles' without being aware of it.

Because the noble efforts of Plato's mentor to save his community are unjustly maligned in much the same terms as Achilles', however, we might at least expect Plato's Socrates to sympathize with a fellow victim of outrageous slander. Yet Socrates condemns Achilles in terms that echo

Agamemnon's. As Agamemnon claims to do, Socrates sees through the smoke screen of Achilles' feigned innocence to the illicit ambitions under-

neath. As if he were paraphrasing Agamemnon, Socrates charges Achilles with "youthful impertinences" (neanieumata) toward his sovereign and with setting an example that corrupts the young (Rep. 390a).

Of course, Socrates may be right about Achilles. He may even be respond-

ing to subtle hints that undercut the surface import of numerous tales, episodes, and subplots which, by establishing Achilles' unlikeness to the sort of usurper that Agamemnon accuses Achilles of being, form an important part

of Homer's implicit defense of Achilles. Indeed, it is the very passages which seemingly demonstrate the absurdity of Agamemnon's accusations that often hint at an underlying affinity between Achilles and oedipal rebels (Sthenelos-

Diomedes, Phoinix, Paris), discussed below, who are contemptuous of fathers, treacherously usurp paternal prerogatives, reject patrimonies as worthless, and variously elicit fathers' angry threats or curses.

Indeed, Socrates' knack for detecting youthful impertinence behind a screen of piety extends beyond Achilles. As our epigraph indicates, Socrates has no trouble recognizing that illicit filial aggression may underlie Euthyphro's indictment of his father, despite the young man's confidence in

the righteousness of his action. Parallels in the Euthyphro between Euthyphro and Socrates' principal accuser Meletus, moreover, suggest that Meletus's



avowedly highminded motives may be similarly impure (Eu. 2c, 4a-b, 4e, Sc, Se-6b). At his trial, Socrates makes the accusation explicit: Meletus only pretends to be concerned about the corruption of the young. He indicts Socrates "out of sheer wanton aggressiveness and self-assertion" (Apol. 26e-27a).

Yet given Socrates' acute awareness of the ubiquity of unlawful desires and their ability masquerade as piety, how can he so confidently mock Meletus's claim that he sees "easily and keenly" through Socrates' own pretense of serving Apollo and saving the Athenians (Eu. Sc)? How can

Socrates so easily dismiss the belief that he ascribes to Anytus in the Meno, namely, that Socrates' ritual public embarrassment of prominent men is

redolent of envious slander?12 In short, how can Socrates be so sure of his own innocence?

The answer to this question will require an excursion into the heroic

psychology that both motivates and undermines Achilles' "pre-Socratic" attempts to avoid wrongdoing: to be a savior rather than scourge of the people

(laos); to shore up paternal and kingly authority damaged by sons who are "outrageous, not to be trusted" (Iliad 1.159-60, 3.105-6); and to demonstrate his loyalty and trustworthiness by offering to sacrifice his life to punish such

outrages. This psychology, which can be discovered in the Iliad and its

mythological background, will be shown to underlie Socrates' myth, as we find it in Plato, as well.

II. HEROIC PSYCHOLOGY

To elucidate the psychology underlying this heroic schema, I draw on a mix of Freudian and revisionist perspectives. Clinical analyses of narcissism and family systems focus on pathological alternatives to maturation: quasi- incestuous parent-child liaisons and intrapsychic splitting into "superadequate" and "inadequate" parts. (Family systems theory also stresses the importance of crazy-making patterns of communication that mask uncon- scionable family dynamics such as the "double bind" created when a mother rejects her son as defective while insisting that he respond to her action as if

it were loving acceptance.) Because the Greek heroic ethos is itself rooted in polar oppositions between divine and mortal, agathos (noble) and kakos (base), between heroic fighters and worthless no accounts (enarithmioi,

outidanoi, 2.202, 1.231, 293), it is not surprising that family systems and narcissism theories have proved useful for illuminating it."3

On their face, Freudian approaches would seem far less apt. From the standpoint of psychological theory, both narcissists and products of patho-



genic families are typically categorized as pre-oedipal. From the standpoint

of anthropology, Homeric Greece in particular has been characterized as a primitive "shame culture" in which honor, shame, and revenge for dishonor

far overshadow the internalized morality that is the defining feature of "guilt cultures.""4 Yet despite its lack of fit with the surface concerns of Homeric epic in particular, a revised Freudian psychology, one which retains Freud's emphasis on oedipal crime and guilt, is essential for understanding the fates of Achilles and Socrates alike.

At first glance, though, narcissism and oedipal conflict do seem mutually

exclusive. The quasi-incestuous liaisons and consequent marginalization of

same-sex parental rivals, which are typical of pathogenic families, and narcissism appear to preempt oedipal conflict. A demeaned, emotionally

abandoned, or absent father does not stand between an already favored son and the superadequate mother who regards him as an extension of herself in

the same way that a father whom the mother loved and respected would. Thus

Slater's typical Greek hero and MacCary's narcissistic "childlike Achilles"

simply do not encounter the paternal opposition that gives rise to oedipal conflict."5

Their problems are of a different kind. In families structured around mother-son or father-daughter liaisons, children's experiences of self are

contradictory. On the one hand, the favored child is miraculously elevated above the same-sex parent whom he or she would otherwise confront as an

insuperable rival. But as the rival parent is demeaned, so too is the part of the

child that takes him or her for a model. Indeed, because the object of parental

doting is not the child as the child really is, but an idealized image skewed in accordance with parents' narcissistic requirements-"conspicuous

among heroes," "like a god," and so on-the favored child experiences itself paradoxically: as unworthy of notice, even as he or she outshines all others. A virtually inevitable solution: splitting the psyche into a godlike self and a

disowned, insignificant, mortal "other." Thus is the cultural dichotomy

between agathos and kakos, between godlikeness and utter insignificance, implanted in individuals, creating a psychological compulsion to load onto

others the stigma of worthlessness while identifying the self as, or with, what

is unquestionably valued: the divine. The father who favors daughters or daughter-like concubines "dishonors"

not only his wife but, paradoxically, the daughter whom he evidently prefers to his wife, because he rejects the mother who is her adult model while tacitly

devaluing her own aspirations to mature adulthood. Ultimately the father compounds this betrayal: dashing the hopes he has raised by favoring her

over her mother, he marries her off to someone else. A daughter "jilted" in this way can compensate for the humiliation of her marriage by devoting



herself to a glorious son whom she fashions into an emblem of a divine

perfection that silences ridicule and effaces her shame.

A similarly double-edged experience awaits the son whose mother regards him as an extension of her superiority to his inadequate father: he effectively

displaces his father, but insofar as he takes his father for a model, or in other ways differs from what would be emblematic of his mother's godlike supe-

riority, he suffers rejection, indeed her refusal to acknowledge him as her

own. Although his mother may continue to regard him as a glorious extension

of herself-sparing him a traumatic betrayal equivalent to a father giving away his daughter to an inferior mate-the son's life course has its own

pitfalls. Inadequate mortal husbands are simply grown-up heroes whose fate

it is to marry proud and angry women and to be displaced by sons whom they

and their wives regard as godlike.

These gendered asymmetries may reflect differences in the typical life

courses of aristocratic Greeks in various periods. Paternal heads of aristocratic Greek clans may have used their daughters' marriages to further their own political and military ambitions, as Agamemnon tries to do when he

offers Achilles his daughter in Iliad 9, whereas mothers could continue to

favor their glorious sons over inadequate husbands throughout life. The degradation of same-sex parental rivals fundamentally distinguishes

heroes' families from ones that foster maturation. In the latter, parents' mutual

love and respect help children to modulate fantasies of irresistible attractive-

ness and of displacing parental rivals, leaving them little alternative but to

undertake the work of maturation in accord with parental strictures. Quasi- incestuous parent-child liaisons, by contrast, offer irresistibly seductive alternatives. In addition to gratifying oedipal ambitions, a son's acceptance

of his mother's view that the father is inadequate while he himself is an

extension of her superiority helps him to overcome contrary feelings in

himself. He can rid himself of the sense of worthlessness, which stems from

the rejection of her real, mortal son implicit in a mother's insistence that he

is an extension of her divinity. At the same time he can evade the onerous

strictures of paternal authority: that he renounce the mother and acquire adult

competencies. In essence, he is spared the indignity of having to do anything

he does not wish to do. In these several respects, he is special-not at all like the common run of men.

By subscribing to his mother's view of his worth relative to his father's,

however, he effectively disinherits himself. He loses his real patrimony, his opportunity to earn his father's approval by relinquishing his wish for union

with the mother and by acquiring competencies like those of an admired and

respected father. Because he rejects paternal authority in its most basic form,

he becomes an enemy to all fathers. Moreover, to the extent that, even as he



makes the heady discovery that he can disregard paternal injunctions, he wants to earn his father's approval by heeding them, he will be aware at some

level that he has forfeited his patrimony, that he has made a disastrous choice.

Others really do have better judgment.16 More to the present point, the maternal favor accompanying the son's denial of paternal authority might

well exacerbate rather than attenuate oedipal guilt. To all appearances, the son actually succeeds in displacing the father.

The pathways by which guilt might arise are more tortuous than in the

standard Freudian account. Even as he embraces his mother's view of this

father as inferior, a son may also love his father and strive to win his approval.

Like Priam's son and designated heir, Hektor, he may respect his father's

position and work to become a competent husband, father, and king in his own right. But a demeaned father's insecurity and his jealousy of a son whom

the mother evidently prefers to him might conspire with the favored son's

absurd fantasies of superiority to doom the son's attempt, plunging father and

son into irreconcilable enmity. The son might try to avoid this catastrophe by

disowning troublesome parts of himself and by splitting off troubling (envi-

ous, suspicious, resentful, pompous, insecure) aspects of his father. Splitting

the father into "good" and "bad" parts thus would combine with a similar dissociation from parts of himself to mask the son's contemptuous rejection of paternal authority.

Split off and disowned, these are nonetheless parts of himself and of the father whose love and respect he aspires to merit. (Indeed, one of the main aims of these dissociative maneuvers would be to preserve a conflict-free remnant of his relationship with the loved father.) To the extent that the authority figure against whom the son rebels-so apparently unlike his real father-represents a split-off aspect of a loved and respected father, the son

will be unable to escape guilt for subscribing to the mother's insulting view

of the father. When called to account by this pseudo-father and punished, the

son may feel unjustly accused, but emasculated nonetheless-like the cut

stump and dead stick into which, in Achilles' view, a procreative sapling was transformed to make the scepter with which Agamemnon decreed Achilles'

unjust punishment (1.234-38); or stripped of the homecoming (nostos) that would mean taking his place as a loved and respected husband, father, and

king-the very things of which he would seem to deprive his father by subscribing to his mother's view of his father as inadequate and undeserv-

ing.17 But because the object of the son's abuse is disguised as other than the

father-and father abusers as other than the son-guilt's decrees may be mistaken for those of a perverse and inscrutable fate.

If we have correctly charted the heroic psychology in which Achilles' story is rooted, Dodds's distinction between "shame cultures" and "guilt cultures"



is revealed as a half-truth. It accurately reflects the preoccupation with honor,

shame, and revenge for dishonor, which is a distinguishing feature of Archaic

culture-and of the family dynamics involved in reproducing it. But it is seriously misleading in suggesting that shame cultures are guilt free. The

quasi-incestuous relationships and devaluation of parental rivals charac-

teristic of the family structures that sustain these cultures may exacerbate oedipal guilt, and shame cultures may be even more guilt ridden than "guilt cultures."

III. MYTHOLOGYAND PSYCHOLOGY OF ACHILLES

Particularly when viewed in its mythological context, Achilles' story

reflects father-daughter, mother-son, and father-son dimensions of a pattern

of skewed family dynamics in which a glorious, destructive intimacy between

father and daughter and between mother and son substitute for ordinary ties

between husband and wife, from one generation to the next. It also reflects

corresponding forms of oedipal conflict and unconscious oedipal guilt. Once in the distant, mythic past, Zeus was enamored of Thetis, but he

broke off his suit when apprised of a prophecy that the goddess would bear

a son "greater than his father in might" (bie hou patros ameinon) who would overthrow him.'8 Were Zeus to marry Thetis, the king and father of gods and

men would thus be deposed. As a result, cosmic order would revert to the

endless cycles of intergenerational strife resolved by Zeus's triumph. So, like

a man who encourages his young mistress by favoring her over his wife but who ultimately balks at marrying her, or a father who appears to prefer his

daughter over her mother but nonetheless "betrays" her by marrying her off

to someone else to gain political or military advantage, Zeus gives Thetis to

a mortal husband instead of marrying her himself. Her future son's consequent "demotion" to mortal status-which is the point of this maneuver-is

the only way to preserve Zeus's authority and cosmic order from violent strife

in which, were he a god, the son of Thetis would prevail.

Being "forced to endure mortal marriage" marks a devastating end to Thetis's prospect of being the wife of the (in her eyes) awe-inspiring Zeus

(Iliad 18.84-5, 429-35). But Thetis finds consolation in a distinction that no other goddess or mortal woman can match: she is the mother of glorious

Achilles. In the course of the poem, it becomes clear that the gratification Thetis derives from bearing a child who is "without fault and powerful" and

who grows up to be "conspicuous among heroes" counterbalances her

bitterness at her marital fate (18.54-60). 9



Although Thetis speaks as if Achilles is simply by nature superior to other

heroes, other stories of this type, as well as other versions of Achilles' own

story, suggest that heroes require postnatal fashioning by divine mothers.

Typically a goddess will try to purge her mortal son of his mortal part-his

inheritance from her mortal husband. Thetis is said to have tried to make her

son immortal by burning away his mortal part in a fire or by dipping him in

the river of the dead, actions that she was prevented from completing by the

interference of her misguided or envious mortal husband.20

For it to work, the favored son of a "divine" mother must collaborate in

his purification. It appears that he can choose between being the glorious

child who he is in his mother's eyes or a shadow self similar to his rejected,

evidently inadequate father. Besides, if he does not seize this opportunity to regard himself as greater than his father, he has to recognize his father's right

to his mother and traverse the arduous path from childhood to adulthood. The

son's choice seems foreordained. Perhaps it is the psychological root of Achilles' distinctive choice of fates: he can choose glory-at the cost of his

nostos-or a long but inglorious life in his fatherland (9.411-6). Achilles' family history clearly reflects the dynamic father-daughter and

mother-son liaisons. Also reflected is the father-son dimension of the hero's

family pattern: reversal of normal superiority of father to son and the son's

attempts to disown problematic aspects of his father and of himself in relation

to his father. Achilles has many fathers-elder males among whom are distributed various traits of the father in our model. He also has many foils-youths who seem to differ from him in some essential respect that

makes them culpable in relation to fathers. Both distinctions-between hero and seemingly antithetical others and between father and nonfather-tend to dissolve under scrutiny.

Zeus Pater seems the divine exemplar of a father and king secure in his

position. Achilles respects and is respected by the "father of gods and men."21

Yet Achilles owes his mortality to Zeus's vulnerability to overthrow by the

god Achilles would have been had not Zeus substituted Peleus for himself as Achilles' father, thus depriving Achilles of the immortality that he might have

regarded as his birthright. And although Achilles is outspoken about protect- ing only Agamemnon's honor, he acts as if his mortality is a sacrifice on

Zeus's behalf, in return for which Zeus owes him "honor at least."22 If, at least outwardly, Zeus exemplifies the father whose position is secure

from filial threat, Peleus represents the father as hero, who bequeaths to his son the strong ash spear with which he wins glory. Yet, although he is displaced in his wife's affections by his demigod son, he displays none of the

ambivalence that our model would lead us to expect. Peleus was not always so acquiescent, however. In his youth he murdered the demigod stepbrother



who eclipsed him in the eyes of a divine stepmother; later he married the

stepmother's sister Thetis (Apollodorus 3).

Agamemnon alone openly manifests the troublesome traits-inferiority, vulnerability, and envy-of which the real fathers in the epic, all of whom

respect and are respected by Achilles, appear free. With its theme of paternal

insult to sons who surpass them in prowess, Agamemnon's encounter with

Diomedes and Sthenelos suggests a real reason for Agamemnon's hostile

belittling of Achilles: paternal envy of glorious sons. (Because Apollo is the

apotheosis of glorious youth, moreover, Agamemnon's mistreatment of

Apollo's priest and failed attempt to make the priest's daughter his concubine

may spring from the same source.)

Even more distressing than envious belittling might be an insecure father's

attempt to bequeath to his son counterfeits of true worth and authority with

which he tries to hide his felt lack of both. When Agamemnon offers to honor

Achilles "like his own son," providing him with the means to be a father and

king in his own right, Achilles tells Agamemnon that he can get such things

from his father (9.394ff). Explicitly identifying Agamemnon as other than

his father enables Achilles to reject the false patrimony offered him by

Agamemnon without appearing to reject his true patrimony. Of course,

Achilles refuses this as well, but because the insecurity of the displaced father

is assigned exclusively to Agamemnon in the Iliad, there is no hint of conflict

between Achilles and Peleus over this.

In our model, it is not just the father's insecurity that dooms the attempt

to exchange filial respect and obedience for a patrimony and paternal blessing. It is also the son's oedipal ambition, enflamed by the mother's rejection of the father as inadequate. Despite heroic efforts to avoid deposing his father,

the son subscribes to the maternal fantasy that he, as the son of a goddess, is

superior to his mortal father.

It is not only by exposing the true motives of Achilles' accuser that

Homer's defense of Achilles prefigures Plato's of Socrates. Homer's juxta- position of Achilles to oedipal rebels who provoke paternal curses prefigures Plato's depiction of Socrates as the antithesis of Achilles and other oedipal

rebels. Most notable among these foils for Achilles is Paris, but there are others: Diomedes and Sthenelos bracket Achilles on a continuum of respect

for paternal and kingly authority. Even when Agamemnon calls him a son inferior to his father in fighting, hyperrespectful Diomedes refrains from insulting the king in return; Sthenelos, on the other hand, insults not only Agamemnon but his and Diomedes' inferior (in his view) fathers. And there

is Phoinix, cursed with sterility for an offense in his youth. "Dishonored" by his father Amyntor's preference for a young concubine,

Phoinix's mother gets him to sleep with the girl to make her "hate the old



man." Enraged when Amyntor curses him, Phoinix is about to kill his father

when one of the gods checks his anger by reminding him that men abominate

a parricide (9.446-61).23 Although the epiphany of the god to restrain Phoinix

pointedly recalls Athena's descent from Olympus to dissuade Achilles from

killing Agamemnon, the tale underscores key differences between Achilles and Phoinix. Phoinix provokes his father's anger by conspiring with his mother to humiliate his father. Although Agamemnon accuses Achilles of

a similar offense when Achilles forces him to give up his concubine, Agamemnon's anger at Achilles seems misplaced. It is not Achilles' fault that

Agamemnon has to "give the girl back to the god" (1.127, cf. 182), but Agamemnon's for foolishly insulting the priest. As Socrates would later say

of his accusers, Agamemnon should be angry at himself for his community- destroying folly, not at Achilles for exposing it. But, as Socrates' accusers will do, Agamemnon prefers to attack "any man who speaks up against" him.24

Despite the implication that Agamemnon slanders Achilles to mask his

own misdeeds, seemingly inconsequential parallels between Phoinix's story and the events of Iliad 1 suggest more of an affinity between Achilles and

Phoinix-and Agamemnon and Amyntor-than is immediately evident. Like

Phoinix's father, Agamemnon insults his wife by proclaiming his preference

for a young concubine (1.112-5). This seemingly gratuitous slight would remind Homer's audience that Agamemnon's wife, like Amyntor's, avenges

the insult: Klytemnestra conspires with her lover to murder Agamemnon when he returns from Troy with another young concubine, Kassandra.25

Although Achilles has no part in Klytemnestra's revenge, he plays a

principal role in avenging a similar injury to the amour propre of Zeus's wife

Hera. The immediate object of Hera's anger, however, is not her husband Zeus, but Priam and his sons, one of whom, Paris, judged Aphrodite more

beautiful than she. But because all Paris does is make explicit the insulting

judgment implied in Zeus's philandering, he is in effect a stand-in for Zeus.26

By turning over to a mortal the delicate task of judging his consort less

attractive than the perennially youthful goddess of love, no less than by allowing a mortal to father Achilles, Zeus avoids painful consequences of his philandering. Because Hera styles herself as a sort of godmother to Achilles, moreover, Achilles' vindication of Hera's honor resembles Phoinix's of his mother's.27

Still, none of this would appear to connect Achilles' role in depriving

Agamemnon of his concubine with Phoinix's in depriving Amyntor of his.

Neither Agamemnon's Amyntor-like insult to Klytemnestra nor Achilles' role

as Hera's principal avenger seems to have any connection with the conflict between Achilles and Agamemnon. Although the goddess who instigates



Achilles' public shaming of Agamemnon stands in a quasi-maternal relation

to him, clearly she inspires Achilles to call an assembly out of pity for the

plague-stricken Achaians (1.56), not to punish Agamemnon for insulting his

wife with a Zeus-like preference for young concubines, which he has not yet articulated.

Yet Homer's gods avenge slights to their proteges' honor as well as their

own. Zeus, for example, protects the honor of fathers and kings. Amyntor

calls on Zeus to accomplish his curses on his son, and Zeus obliges by

rendering Phoinix incapable of fathering sons (9.453-7). The destruction of

Troy accomplishes not only the vengeance of Hera, but Zeus's curse on Priam and his sons, which avenges the dishonor that Paris did to Menelaos by

seducing Menelaos's wife while living under his roof (13.623-7, 20.306)-an

offense that parallels Phoinix's against his father. As a king, Agamemnon

claims special honors from Zeus, although seemingly mistakenly.28 May not Hera show similar favor to her mortal counterparts, the royal consorts whose

husbands dishonor them the way Zeus does her? In Klytemnestra's murder-

ous conflict with Agamemnon, as in Hera's own quarrel with the Trojans,

cannot Hera enlist her godson in the service of queenly revenge? When she

instigates Achilles' public shaming of Agamemnon, may not Hera act on

behalf of her mortal counterpart-even as she succors the Achaians and advances her own cause? Like Phoinix with his father, Achilles may indeed

succumb to maternal enticements to degrade and displace his sovereign and would-be father-in-law, Agamemnon.

Just as the contrast between Achilles and Phoinix blurs under scrutiny, so

too does the antithesis of Achilles and Paris. When, after Aphrodite rescues

Paris from mortal combat with Menelaos, he assuages the shame of losing

by making love to Helen, Homer nonetheless describes him as staying out of the fighting in anger, thus conflating him with preeminent heroes like

Achilles.29 Equally incongruously, Paris slays Achilles. Might not the fact that Paris becomes Achilles' nemesis rather than the reverse indicate that

Achilles' attempts to avoid his oedipal fate are undone by his hidden affinity

with the son of Priam who, more than any other, is "outrageous, not to be trusted"?

In addition to glorious sons' attempts to escape condemnation by splitting off and disavowing troubling aspects of their fathers and themselves, the

Iliad's narrative structure may encode the ultimate failure of these maneuvers.

After all, Agamemnon lives to see Achilles dead and eventually wins the

glorious victory "falsely" promised him in the dream sent by Zeus. More to

the point, Zeus's aid to Achilles involves a hidden price: Achilles' obsession

with revenge on Agamemnon leads to the death of his friend and alter ego, Patroklos. Achilles hoped Patroklos would enjoy the homecoming as hus-



band, father, and king that he himself sacrificed for glory, but the cost of

humiliating Agamemnon is a more outrageous and painful blow to these

erotically grounded aspirations than Achilles suffered with the loss of his

concubine in book 1 (18.324-27, 19.329-38, 297-9). Perhaps Agamemnon is

honored in Zeus's ordinance after all. Perhaps Achilles' special achievements and connections to divine patronesses, and even their explicit invitation to

revile Agamemnon, do not really give him the right to do so. Just as chthonic

Zeus avenges Phoinix's offense against his father by accomplishing Amyn-

tor's curse on his son, so Zeus, the father and king of gods and men, may

avenge the outrages committed by Achilles against the king whose scepter, whether Achilles acknowledges it or not, comes from Zeus.

Peleus's fall from the mortal whom the gods most honor to a man

abandoned by his wife and bereft of his son underlies the memorable image

that Achilles presents in the Iliad's final book, the two urns from which an

inscrutable Zeus dispenses evil to even the most fortunate of mortals, reduc-

ing a man to a failure, treated with contempt by all he meets. But Achilles

himself experiences a series of such outrages. Do underlying similarities between Achilles and Phoinix or Achilles and Paris have anything to do with

Achilles' fall from "outshining all others" to becoming a dispossessed,

outraged failure that is Achilles' theme in this passage? Achilles' loss of "the

bride of [his] heart" (9.336) and reduction to a cut stump or a dead stick,

which like Phoinix, has lost its generative power, in retaliation for depriving

Agamemnon of his prize; and the terrible loss of the alter ego, Patroklos,

whose name means glory of fathers, and whom Achilles expected to have his

nostos in his place, so that Achilles would have it both ways: glory and

nostos-do any of these calamities have anything to do with oedipal crime

and guilt? We have at least suggested how they might, according to an agenda

of which Homer and his audience would be only subliminally aware.

The real point, as Plato recognized, is not Achilles' guilt or innocence.

Rather, it is how the poem functioned for Homer's audience, especially given

the Iliad's unique status as a panhellenic national epic, the collective autobi-

ography or self-narrative of Archaic (and to a large extent, Classical) Greeks.

On a public, collective level, the Iliad allows an audience vicariously to

participate in conflicts among split-off, intolerable aspects of sons and fathers. As Plato recognizes in his critique of poetry, it allows its audience an

opportunity to indulge vicariously, without acknowledging, discreditable

fantasies (Rep. 605d, e). (With his theory of catharsis, Aristotle's Poetics

emends indulge to purge, thus answering Plato's call for a defense of poetry

[Rep. 607d, e].) To the extent that Achilles is an idealized reflection of the

competitive, honor- and shame-oriented, youth-worshipping Greeks in Homer's audience, they are spared discomfiting self-knowledge. The Iliad



does not help them to acknowledge, much less resolve, their actual, culturally

specific, father complexes. Instead it encourages them to believe that they are

subject to an inscrutable fate that seems to balance, like the scales of father

Zeus described by Achilles in the final book of the poem, every brilliant success with a devastating defeat, exacting a hidden price for every promised

victory.

IV SOCRATES'INNOCENT HEROISM

Against this psychological and mythological backdrop, I want to propose

an account of Socrates' ministrations to the Athenians that not only suggests

that he was guilty-although hardly uniquely so, and certainly not deserving

of a scapegoat's death-but also explains the confidence with which, despite his ability to see through others' pretensions of piety, he shrugs off the accusations against him.30

Apollo's oracle is of central importance to Socrates' defense because, as

Socrates tells us in the Apology, it provides unimpeachable authority for

Socrates' claim to superior wisdom (Apol. 20e-21b). The underlying logic of Socrates' interpretation of the oracle seems to run something like this: Apollo

exemplifies excellence and is therefore wise; he knows what true excellence

consists of.3" That Apollo considers Socrates-who tries to approach as nearly as possible to the divine of which Apollo is the chief exemplar-wise

proves that Socrates is in fact wise. If, moreover, the divine things that both

of them recognize as supremely valuable happen to be at odds with goals and

gods espoused by the majority of Athenians, this is an indication not of impiety on Socrates' -or, god forbid, Apollo's-part, but of the Athenians' benighted condition.

Into this closed circle of explanation, no doubt about Socrates' innocence

can intrude. Yet he assumes precisely what we cannot: namely, that illicit

self-assertion has no part in leading Socrates to embrace the idea of his special

kinship to and commission from the gods. Once Socrates accepts as simple

truth his affinity with the divine-as in the teachings of Diotima, to be

discussed presently-conduct of his that may not be innocent can appear absolutely so.

For Socrates it is axiomatic that Apollo is himself completely free of any

taint of impiety, in which case "the god's business" must be equally pure. In

fact, however, Apollo links Socrates to the mythology of glorious sons of insulted, divine mothers and its underlying psychology. The glorious son of

Leto, who like Achilles is "without fault and powerful"-joined with Hera



and the other gods in an attempted coup against Zeus. Angering Zeus on

another occasion, he only escaped a long stay in Tartaros when his mother-

like Thetis, a castoff paramour of Zeus-intercedes for him, just as Thetis

intercedes with Zeus on behalf of her son.32 Doubtless, Socrates would dismiss the myth of Apollo's rebellion as just another poet's lie about the

gods. Such a denial would nonetheless fail to establish what Socrates simply assumes: that there can be no contradiction between devotion to Apollo and piety toward Zeus.

When we look at how Socrates interprets the oracle, we again recognize patterns characteristic of our heroic psychology. As Achilles does with

Agamemnon, Socrates sharply distinguishes between the "empty mediocri- ties"33 whose incompetence he exposes in the agora and the absent mortal father and divine paternal laws for which he professes to have only respect (discussed below). Also like Achilles, he parlays a particular set of qualifications-which include an implicit readiness to believe that he is somehow in a class by himself-into a claim of absolute superiority. Thus,

although the oracle only says that no one is wiser than Socrates, he interprets

it to mean that he alone is wise, and he contrives a series of contests, which he views as demonstrating his categorical superiority.34

It is, however, in Socrates' account in the Symposium of his initiation into

the philosophic pursuit of immortality by a Mantinean mystic named Diotima

that the heroic pattern emerges most clearly. Herself a daimonic intermediary

between gods and men, Diotima teaches that the good (agathos, 205e) is beautiful and perfect (kalon kai teleon, 204c); that only the good or noble in

this sense can ever be the object of love: whatever is defective or ugly men properly regard as alien to themselves (205e-206a). She distinguishes between vulgar folk and the nobler sort (208e), who are suitable for initiation into the pursuit of immortality according to their love of what is immutable

and perfect (209e-210a). These are the lovers of wisdom, philosophers. Thus she encourages Socrates to rid himself of worthless mortal trappings and to ascend from love of physical beauty to love and knowledge of divine excellence. As a reward, she promises that he will be beloved of the gods (theophilei), and if any mortal can become so, immortal.35

In this, Diotima resembles Thetis attempting to immortalize her son. Whereas Thetis burns away Achilles' mortal part in a fire, however, Diotima tells Socrates stories of Achilles, among other seekers of immortality, to induce Socrates to slough off defiling mortal attachments.

The bargain that Diotima offers Socrates-immortality in exchange for discipleship that validates her claim to knowledge of things divine-implicitly downplays the importance of patrimony and the whole range of male- dominated worldly pursuits, political and otherwise. Because she can prom-



ise him union with the divine, lesser transactions and aspirations pale to

insignificance. In particular, the initiate need not reach an accommodation

with paternal authority in which he renounces the dream of triumphing over

and degrading it-thereby avoiding a paternal curse and receiving a paternal

blessing as he sets about acquiring the competencies that make fathers rightly

respected.36 Honored by Diotima as a suitable initiate and possible candidate

for the "final revelation"-and implicitly threatened with the disdain of gods

and mortals if he should become identified in her eyes with anything inferior

and defective-Socrates' only worry is to prove that he is indeed the nobler

sort, a lover of perfection who deserves divine favor.

Indeed, although Apollo has yet to proclaim it in his oracle, Socrates is

already implicitly superior to men who pride themselves in their worldly wisdom and accomplishments. Diotima's recognition thus encourages

Socrates to cultivate a divine nobility compared to which the excellences and

proudest achievements of ordinary mortals are as nothing. As their superior,

and the god's emissary, Socrates is exempt from having to acknowledge their

supposed superiority. Indeed he is duty bound to chastise them-on behalf of the god, of course-should they try to assert it.

The exemption from having to acknowledge paternal claims to superiority,

and the implicit license to disparage these claims if a father should foolishly

try to press them, might indeed exert a corrupting influence on a young mind.

Socrates' ironic questioning of Euthyphro would appear to indicate that any

doctrine that justifies a son's defamation of his father is suspect (3d-5a). But, although Socrates implies that Euthyphro has been seduced by the illusion

of "knowledge of things divine," Socrates does not view the doctrine of his

own special kinship to the gods with similar wariness. Try as he might, he

can find no fault in the god's designation of him as superior to the common

run of men.

Still there are moments of doubt, even for the defiant Socrates of the

Apology. At one point in his examination of Meletus, Socrates seems almost

to ask to be shown the flaw in his airtight defense: although it is beyond him

to see how this might be, he allows the possibility that by exhorting the young

to put aside other pursuits to seek the highest welfare of their souls, he might

be corrupting them, encouraging them to disobey and disrespect true supe- riors (30b).37 Because Socrates does encourage young men to discredit paternal claims to wisdom, it is likely that he does in fact corrupt some of

them, despite the apparent absurdity of this proposition from Socrates' point of view. Given the seamless quality of Socrates' defense, he might well wish

for someone to play Socrates to his Euthyphro and point out its flaws to him. Be that as it may, in the Crito and the Phaedo, which are set in the interval

between Socrates' conviction and execution, we encounter a chastened



Socrates. Gone is the angry, defiant hero of the Apology, who impugns the

motives of his accusers and who denies the title of juror (dikast) to, and

curses, those who vote to convict him (39c-40a). Far from minimizing the

educative competence of the laws and of fathers or ordinary Athenian citizens

as he did at his trial, Socrates acknowledges the combined role of paternal

laws and of an ordinary Athenian, his craftsman father, in engendering,

raising, and educating him.38 This newfound-or rediscovered-humility

with regard to the authority of laws, citizens, and fathers, moreover, underlies

his determination to suffer the penalty prescribed by the jury.

Socrates justifies his rejection of Crito's appeal to him to escape with the unsettling doctrine that a lawful sentence must be accepted, even if the verdict

on which it is based is manifestly unjust and even if the penalty is death and thus irrevocable. In support of this doctrine, he argues that without its laws a city ceases to exist in an important sense, and less plausibly, that to defy a lawful sentence, even in an extreme case such as his, would be to do everything in his power to destroy the laws of Athens (Crito 50a-54e). Of

course the reverse proved to be true: by allowing, even provoking the

Athenians to execute him, and by refusing the avenue of escape that they left

open to him, Socrates did everything in his power to discredit the demo-

cratic laws of Athens. As Socrates himself prophesied (Apol. 38c), the damage was considerable. Enshrined in the Platonic dialogues, the infamy of Socrates' execution has served as one of the most powerful arguments

against democracy.

Socrates may win his greatest triumph over his democratic opponents by

provoking them to execute him, yet this does not belie the sincerity of his

contention that he must die to protect the laws and to appease the (albeit

misguided) paternal anger underlying his indictment and sentence.39 Protes-

tations of innocence notwithstanding, if Socrates were subliminally aware of

the "wanton self-assertion" of his own claims to more than mortal authority,

and if he were prey to unconscious guilt on that account, his decision to die

would become more comprehensible, as would the tortured argumentation with which he defends it.

Socrates' manifest concern to avoid retaliating against the laws for his unjust sentence suggests, however, a different explanation for Socrates'

penitence. It is an explanation more in line not only with Socrates' expressed concerns but also with the ironic, Achillean, heroic pattern in which a

previously blameless hero incurs guilt through his angry response to an unjust accusation.

Impersonating the laws of Athens, Socrates likens the escape proposed by

Crito to a son's retaliation against a father for unjustly reproving or punishing him (Crito 50c-e). The motifs of paternal reproof and filial retaliation,



together with a visitation by superhuman agents to prevent a fundamental violation of social order, recall the divine interventions that dissuade Achilles

and Phoinix from violating the special injunctions against killing, respec-

tively, an unjust king and a father. Just as Athena intervenes to persuade Achilles not to kill his commander, king, and would-be father-in-law

Agamemnon, so the paternal laws of Athens dissuade Socrates from hitting back against them.

Although the humility with regard to fathers, citizens, and laws that

Socrates displays in the Crito might be the result of contemplating but then pulling back from what Socrates regarded as a parricidal act, a more likely

conjecture is that he repents of actually having lashed out at his accusers at his trial. There Socrates implies that Anytus fakes a paternal concern with

Socrates' corrupting influence on his son and, after similarly impugning Meletus's motives, he dismisses Meletus's contention that the laws and ordinary

Athenian citizens are capable of educating the young. Thus, although in the Crito Socrates represents himself as overcoming the temptation to retaliate, his penitence might nonetheless reflect his guilt over transgressions that he

committed in the heat of refuting his accusers' public slanders at his trial.'

A passage from the Phaedo lends support to this hypothesis. On the day that will end with his self-execution, Socrates speculates about the fate of the

souls of those who, in a moment of passion, did violence to parents but spent

the rest of their lives regretting their action and trying to atone for it. They

are sent to Tartaros, but unlike the incorrigibles with whom they share their

gloomy abode, they are permitted, once a year, to entreat those whom they have outraged (hubrisan). If they fail to obtain forgiveness, they are sent back

to Tartaros. "This goes on until they prevail upon those whom they have wronged (edikesan); for this is the penalty (dike) imposed upon them by the judges (dikaston)" (113e-1 14c).

Socrates' unwavering protestations of innocence notwithstanding, his reference to sentences and jurors-and the contrast between the simple

acknowledgment of guilt and of the authority ofjurors on the day of his death

and Socrates' denial of both at his trial-might indicate Socrates' remorse for his behavior in court. His idea that guilty souls can only leave Tartaros with

the permission of those whom they have wronged echoes but also emends his refusal in the Crito to leave his prison unless he can change the minds of the judges who unjustly convicted him. In the Phaedo, the man who prepares the hemlock praises Socrates for not cursing him as other condemned men do for carrying out government orders (1 16c). This too contrasts with Socrates' curse on the jurors who carried out their civic responsibilities at his

trial (Apol. 38c-39c). In the interval between his trial and execution, Socrates evidently has mastered the desire for retaliation that marred his defense. Thus



purified, he can look forward to death as the final separation from his mortal

part on the way to a purer, bodiless existence.41

But the tragic paradigm of the otherwise blameless hero, whose only

transgression stems from his anger at the unjust accusations against him, finally holds up no better for Socrates than it does for Achilles. After all, the formal accusations that provoke Socrates' attacks on paternal and legal

authority at his trial, themselves respond to his habitual, unprovoked attempts

to undermine such authority.42 As Socrates himself points out, moreover, the

indictment merely reiterates informal accusations that his attempts to "help

the god's cause" have provoked from the beginning (Apol. 18b-24a). Even

Socrates' retaliatory discrediting of accusers was probably routine. Such, at

any rate, is the implication of Socrates' catty swipe at Anytus in the Meno.

Of the rather distinguished man who has just warned him about his penchant

for running down the reputations of other, more distinguished Athenians,

Socrates says: "He thinks I am slandering our statesmen, and moreover he

thinks himself to be one of them" (Meno 95a). Thus Socrates' respect for the engendering, nurturing, educative role of the laws and of his own father in

the Crito tacitly reverses not just a momentary lapse at his trial but a defining

feature of his philosophic practice.

Viewed in this light, the mocking questions that Socrates puts in the

mouths of the laws in the Crito may respond less to the hypothetical

retaliation that Socrates contemplates than to the habitual disregard of pater-

nal authority and retaliations for its criticisms of him and encroachments on

Apollo's domain, which are integral to his philosophic vocation. Indeed, in

addition to impudence, Socrates has the laws accuse him of succumbing to

just the sort of beguiling fantasy of innate superiority to paternal authority

that we posited in our model of heroic psychology. Does Socrates imagine,

the laws ask, that he is equal to the laws or to his father? That it is right to

retaliate when a father scolds or punishes him? Is his wisdom such that it

makes him forget the honor he owes to them and his fatherland? Does he not

realize the importance of respecting and placating the anger of father and

fatherland (Crito 50e-5 1b)? If, moreover, Socrates' offenses are habitual and he has proven unrepent-

ant and incorrigible, this might explain his determination to die-in a way that a momentary loss of control at his trial would not. Although Socrates

tells Meletus that he ought to remonstrate with him in the agora rather than

take him to court, Socrates' breezy disregard for Anytus's reproofs in the agora suggest that he was impervious to criticism (Meno 94e-95a). As in the matter of fathers' objections to Socrates' effect on their sons, so it is here: if

Socrates had chosen to cross-examine Anytus rather than Meletus, the slipperiness of his argument would have been apparent.



To be assailed by guilt and to dream of forgiveness and reconciliation with

those one feels one has wronged is not the same thing, of course, as to

renounce the attitudes and practices that give rise to self-accusation and desire

for punishment-or even to be conscious of the relationship between the two.

So it would appear to be with Socrates. The very passages that suggest Socrates' penitence explicitly proclaim his innocence: the offenses for which he reproaches himself on behalf of the laws are purely hypothetical; the

philosopher is as much above the common level of purity as the penitent

sinner of the Phaedo is beneath it. Having shown himself an unrepentant and

incorrigible-which is to say, heroic-sinner, immune to reproof, Socrates

might well believe that the only way to stop him-as he says at his trial-will

be to kill him; that the only way for him to avoid doing wrong will be to

destroy himself, or at least his unruly mortal part.43

V DEMOCRACY

Plato's account of Socrates' trial and execution forms the centerpiece of

his indictment of democracy. In Socrates' (conscious, unrepentant) view,

ordinary men lack the divine knowledge that would be required either to

educate their sons "as men and citizens" (Apol. 20b) or to govern themselves.

In the case of Athens, the incompetence of the demos and its leaders would

not have been so bad if they had heeded the gadfly philosopher who

confronted them with their ignorance. But instead of acknowledging Socrates

as god's gift to Athens and leaving the education of their sons to him and his

followers, the Athenians killed Apollo's blameless emissary. Thus did the Athenians' arrogation divine prerogatives lead to the injustice of Socrates'

execution. It is a short step from Plato's account of the Athenians' crime

against philosophy to the view that democracy per se is fatally flawed. Not

only are ordinary, philosophically untutored men incapable of governing,

they are liable to destroy anyone who renders a true account of the disastrous

effects, on their own and their children's souls, of their arrogations of paternal

and political authority.

If our analysis is correct, however, Plato's indictment of democracy is

systematically distorted: it is not democratic leaders, but Socrates who rebels

against legitimate authority. He is guilty of hubris, not they. His arrogant

claims of kinship to a more than human power and knowledge derive from

all too human-and, in Archaic and Classical Greek culture, all too common-fantasies of divine superiority. Of more importance to political phi-

losophy, the psychological and cultural biases epitomized by Plato's Socrates



produce a systematic blindness to ordinary mortals' capacities for self-gov-

ernment. His political vision and judgment, and that of his praise poet Plato,

are skewed. Understanding the distortion of democracy in Plato's heroic

mythologizing of Socrates helps to explain corresponding distortions in

Platonic political philosophy as a whole.

One can deplore Socrates' execution (and lament the savagery of the

unconscious guilt that may have led him to provoke it) while still recognizing

that his accusers had a point. The writings of I. F. Stone and Allan Bloom

confirm this. Although one was an anti-Platonic democrat and the other a

Platonic critic of Athenian (and American) democracy, Stone and Bloom

(following his mentor, Leo Strauss) agree in positing a fundamental conflict

between Socrates' teachings and Athenian democracy. Where Bloom and

Stone diverge is in their characterization of the Socratic threat: was it

philosophic truth that gave offense (Strauss/Bloom) or a seductive but

misleading philosophy that unjustly maligned ordinary men's capacity for self-government and encouraged the subversion of democratic institutions

and laws (Stone)?"4 Our analysis provides psychological underpinning for the latter position.

Beyond exposing the hubris underlying Socrates' quarrel with democratic

authority, it explains why this unwarranted self-assertion is virtually unde- tectable from within Socrates' worldview, making the charges against him

appear perverse and unjust. As we have seen, Socratic thought offers ready,

plausible counterexplanations for the repeated accusations and warnings

provoked by Socrates' philosophizing: his victims' anger at having their

pretensions and irresponsibility exposed, a general envy of his special affinity

with the gods, and so forth.

True, in the dialogues treating his last days, there are indications that, at a

subliminal level, Socrates (and Plato) knew better-or rather sided as

strongly with the outraged paternal authorities who called for Socrates' death

as with the divinely appointed gadfly who casually impugned their compe-

tence to run a state or educate their sons and who interpreted their protests as

proof of their ignorance. Although Socrates' penitence and unconscious guilt

may evidence an underlying respect for democracy, his heroic psychology

leads him to view democracy through a distorting lens, the refractive error of which can be explained with reference to a complex of cultural attitudes,

family dynamics, and psychological predispositions that already had a long history in Socrates' time.

Both factors-ambivalence and systematic distortion-are operative in a

by now familiar comedy of philosophic innocence. Plato clearly intends his

account of Socrates' encounter with Anytus in the Meno to explain Anytus's



subsequent indictment of Socrates: Socrates respected the prominent demo-

crat, but Anytus failed to appreciate Socrates' good intentions toward Athens

and its leaders. The impression of a similar friendliness toward democracy

on Plato's own part is conveyed in the Seventh Letter, where Plato says that

his political hopes were revived by the ouster of the thirty tyrants and the

restoration of a moderate democracy under a group of returned exiles that

included Anytus, but that these hopes were dashed by the execution of his

guiltless teacher (325a-c).45 When we reflect that Socrates' respect for Anytus

and his colleagues included an insistence that they admit that they could

neither govern nor pass on virtue or wisdom to their sons, however, and that

Socrates makes out himself alone to be even marginally competent in these

areas, we may begin to wonder exactly of what Socratic or Platonic respect

for democracy consisted.

Because for Sophocles in particular, Achilles is the prototypical tragic

hero, this account of Achilles' and Socrates' innocent usurpations bears

tangentially on debates over the contemporary relevance of Greek, especially

Sophoclean, tragedy. Rather than the irreconcilable conflicts and incommen-

surable goods that Hegel's scholarly heirs have found to characterize the Iliad

and Greek tragedy, this analysis suggests that the Iliad exemplifies a ten-

dency, rooted in culturally pervasive narcissism, to perceive authority con-

flicts as iffeconcilable when they are not. Is Achilles to blame if his claims

to quasi-divinity antagonize Agamemnon? Can Socrates help it if Apollo sets

him a mission that brings him into conflict with Athens' leaders? The short answer is yes. Although each protests his innocence when charged with

self-aggrandizement, each behaves as if burdened with unconscious guilt.46 The family patterns in which the heroic, sacrificial, glory-seeking strain

of archaic and classical culture is rooted do not merely foster particularly

intractable forms of oedipal conflict. In so doing, they undermine public

virtues that are crucial to democratic theory and practice. To become adults

and responsible members of political communities, children first must learn

to reconcile their own claims to rewards and honors with those of others. At

the same time, they must recognize the need to earn respect and self-esteem

by acquiring the competencies that distinguish adults from children. These

lessons, as fundamental to political competence as to the psychological and moral development that underpin it, are not mere precepts, but elements of

character. Children's acceptance or rejection of rival parents' claims is

formative. The culturally normative family dynamics studied here forestall

children's development into responsible citizens as well as into psychological

and moral adults.

Even so, Achillean heroes would seem to suffer from an excess of two

virtues that are crucial for democracy: autonomy and a critical stance toward



authority. The need to hold authorities accountable is intrinsic to democracy. Without citizen autonomy, self-government is at best an illusion.

In the dialogues of Socrates' last days, however, we see how a combination of cultural values and family dynamics can engender endless oscillation

between unacknowledged, envious attacks on paternal authority and equally unconscious, guilty reparations for them. Despite Socrates' outspoken criti-

cism of authorities, his story exemplifies the ways in which the psychology

of Greek heroism undermines abilities to recognize, appropriately criticize,

and exercise authority that are fundamental to democracy.

But surely the Achillean philosopher who speaks truth to power is autono-

mous. Unconscious hostility to paternal authority may skew his criticism of

authorities generally, and guilt, imagined as a magically potent paternal imprecation, may forbid the exercise of authority. But is there any doubt that

Plato's Socrates is autonomous? In the Socratic/Platonic view, the philo-

sophic hero, who follows the arguments wherever they lead, who commits

himself to abide by the conclusions of rational inquiry, and who absolutely

refuses to commit wrong even in the face of death, is an exemplar of

independence of mind and autonomy. In contrast to him stand stolid demo-

crats like Anytus, whose conventional views of wisdom and virtue merely reflect current prejudice.47

Socrates' lonely opposition to the democratic assembly's illegal, en bloc prosecution of the generals for refusing to endanger the living by recovering

the bodies of the dead at Arginusae, and his heroic refusal to carry out the unlawful orders of the thirty to arrest Leon of Salamis, demonstrate real moral

courage and independence of mind. These qualities are evident as well in his

refusal to abandon his philosophic vocation, despite the threats that his

enemies finally succeeded in carrying out against him, and in his reasoned

refusal to evade the penalties prescribed by law.

Even so, our analysis cautions us against accepting what is in fact a

traditional dichotomy between the defiant independence of the hero and the

herd mentality of the mass of men.48 On one hand, the Achillean hero who

makes a show of extreme independence may have something to prove.

Dependent on a mother's image of him as an extension of her superiority to

mere mortals, he lacks the secure autonomy that separation from (rather than

imagined union with) the divine mother and the acquisition of adult compe-

tencies would provide.49

At the same time, he may fail to recognize true autonomy. Indeed, the

Achillean hero and his praise poet are apt to mistake the sort of autonomy

that the hero lacks for mindless acceptance of conventional wisdom. Despite

the real threat of being denigrated by their sons and rivals as uninitiated, vulgar mortals, men like Anytus play the part of ordinary mortal parents in



myth: they attempt to interfere with the "divinization" of their sons. They are

not afraid to betray their lack of affinity with the divine in other ways, for

example by admiring and emulating worldly, entirely mortal, public men. In

warning Socrates about his penchant for running down the reputations of

Athenian statesmen in the Meno then, Anytus may display greater inde-

pendence and autonomy than Socrates does when he ingeniously disproves Anytus's conventional wisdom.

Other dialogues, notably the Republic, more clearly exhibit the effects on

political thinking of the mutually reinforcing family dynamics and cultural

values examined here. Plato's attempt to imagine legitimate authority and

just and beneficent order is skewed in ways our analysis would lead us to

expect. First, it is marked by an obsessive need to repress tyrannical ambition

and those who incite it, whereas it protests the philosopher's innocence in

this regard.50 Second, it literally enthrones the socratic philosopher's pre-

sumption of superiority to ordinary men, his divinely sanctioned right to rule

the uninitiated.51 Third, and most important, it remains oblivious to the

political capacities of ordinary men: to create, govern, and defend polities based on mutual accommodation, respect, and responsibility for their com-

mon well-being.52 Because Plato's Socrates never relinquishes his fantasy of

superiority to inadequate mortal fathers, it is not surprising that he cannot

readily imagine such a republic. To Socrates, with his superior wisdom, such

a democratic polity would seem unjust; the authority that created and sus-

tained it, a usurpation.

NOTES

1. All translations of the Iliad and Platonic dialogues are from Richmond Lattimore, trans.,

Iliad of Homer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951); Edith Hamilton and Huntington

Cairns, eds., The Collected Dialogues of Plato Including the Letters (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1961). Arguments presented here are developed at greater length in my dissertation, "Poetry and Political Thought in Archaic Greece: The Iliad, the Theogony, and the

Rise of the Polis" (Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1989), hereafter "PPT."

2. Cedric Whitman, Homer and the Heroic Tradition (New York: Norton, 1965; orig. pub.

1958); Peter Euben, The Tragedy of Political Theory: The Road Not Taken (Princeton: Princeton

University Press, 1990), 219-25 (hereafter TP7).

3. See discussion of Achilles' mythology.

4. For examples of an overdrawn contrast between Socrates and Achilles, see N. A.

Greenberg's otherwise rewarding "Socrates' Choice in the Crito," Harvard Studies in Classical Philology 70 (1965): 45-82, 73-4, 79; also Thomas G. West, Plato's "Apology of Socrates": An

Interpretation, with a New Translation (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1979), 151-2,

154-6, 159.



5. Cf. how Achilles honors the king of Eetion, whom he killed, and renounces the queen

who is his prize for the deed (6.414-20). On the demi-god hero's "rival status," which threatens

any mortal king-not merely a weak, buffoonish one like Agamemnon-see James Redfield, Nature and Culture in the Iliad (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 93-5.

6. On the emergence of the polis in eighth-century Greece, see Snodgrass, Archaic Greece

(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 33-40 and passim, among many other works cited in "PPT," 17-27.

7. Leo Strauss and his devotees have been especially attentive to Socrates' invocation of Achilles: Leo Strauss, "On Plato's Apology of Socrates and Crito," orig. pub. 1976, reprinted in

Thomas L. Pangle, ed., Leo Strauss: Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (Chicago: Univer-

sity of Chicago Press, 1983), 41, 44, 47, 55; Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind:

How Higher Education Has Failed Democracy and Impoverished the Souls of Today's Students

(New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987), 66, 274, 280, 281; and The Republic of Plato: Translated,

with Notes and an Interpretive Essay by Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968), 358; Socrates as "the new Achilles," West, Plato's "Apology of Socrates," 151-73.

8. Arthur Adkins, Merit and Responsibility: A Study in Greek Values (Oxford: Oxford

University Press, 1960); E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1951), chap. 2. But cf. Anthony Long, "Morals and Values in Homer," Journal

of Hellenic Studies 90 (1970): 121-39; Matthew Dickie, "Dike as a Moral Term in Homer and Hesiod," Classical Philology 73 (1978): 91-101.

9. Here, as elsewhere, gods inspire mortals to actions that are consonant with mortals' characters. Gods represent aspects of motivation in "overdetermined" or polyvalent human actions; see Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 7-13. For an overview of Homeric gods, see

Seth Schein, The Mortal Hero: An Introduction to Homer's Iliad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984), 45-67.

10. As in Socrates' account, so in the Iliad: Apollo enforces the distinction between gods and

mortals. He beats down heroes when they threaten to become "greater than human" (5.440-2,

16.786-8). (Marsyas, to whom Alcibiades compares Socrates in the Symposium, 215b, was flayed

alive by Apollo for challenging the god to a contest in flute playing.) But for power (kratos) or

heroic might (bie) that challenge to divine prerogatives, Socrates substitutes wisdom: Michael

L. Morgan, Platonic Piety (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990), 22.

11. Apol. 40a, discussed by Eva Brann, "The Offense of Socrates: A Rereading of Plato's

Apology," Interpretation 7, no. 2 (May 1978), 1-2. Critics who deny an association between

Homeric dike and justice notwithstanding, Lattimore's translation of dikaspoloi as administrators

of justice is borne out by 19.180-1, where Agamemnon finally acknowledges that his treatment of Achilles was not just [dikaios]; cf. Long, "Morals and Values in Homer," 25-6.

12. Meno, 95a. Plato anticipates Freud's discovery that "unlawful desires" (paranomoi/anomoi

epithumioi)-for example, to kill fathers and have intercourse with mothers-while hidden from

us in waking life, reveal themselves in dreams (Rep. 571a-572b, 573d; cf. Rep. 359d-360b).

13. Heinz Kohut, The Analysis of the Self: A Systematic Approach to the Psychoanalytic

Treatment of Narcissistic Personality Disorders (New York: International University Press, 1971). Early family systems theory: Gregory Bateson et al., "Toward a Theory of Schizophrenia"

Behavioral Science 1 (1956): 251-64 (double bind); Theodore Lidz et al., "The Intrafamilial Environment of Schizophrenic Patients. Part II: Marital Schism and Marital Skew," American

Journal of Psychiatry 114 (1957): 241-8. Families structured around inadequate fathers and superadequate mothers: Murray Bowen, "Family Relationships in Schizophrenia," in Schizo- phrenia: An IntegratedApproach, ed. Alfred Auerbach (New York: RonaldPress, 1959), 147-78. Recent overview of family systems theory: Carlfred B. Broderick, Understanding Family Process: Basics of Family Systems Theory (Newbury Park, CA: Sage, 1993). Narcissistic



foundations of Classical Greek culture: Philip Slater, The Glory of Hera: Greek Mythology and

the Greek Family (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968). Narcissism in Homer: W. Thomas MacCary,

Childlike Achilles: Ontogeny and Phylogeny in the Iliad (New York: Columbia University Press,

1982).

14. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, chap. 2.

15. Slater, The Glory of Hera, 53; MacCary, Childlike Achilles, 81.

16. Achilles admits that others are "better in counsel" (18.106). The best of their respective

age groups in this regard are Diomedes, who declines the invitation to denigrate his father as a

shameful failure in book 4, and Odysseus, who identifies himself as the "father of Telemachos."

17. Model nostos: Odysseus' return to his wife Penelope, father Laertes, and son Telemachos

in the Odyssey. With cruel irony, Homer has Agamemnon articulate the paradigm (2.136-7).

18. Laura Slatkin interprets this quotation from Iliad 1.404 as an allusion to a tradition in

which Thetis is destined to give birth to a son greater than his father, as for example in Pindar,

Isthmian 8: "The Wrath of Thetis," TAPA 116 (1986): 12-3; and The Power of Thetis: Allusion

and Interpretation in the Iliad (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991), 69-77. 19. The mythologies of Demeter's attempts to immortalize Demophoon and of Leto and her

glorious children, Apollo ("without fault and powerful [amumona te krateron te]") and Artemis,

also illustrate this pattern (Slatkin, The Power of Thetis, 88-94); Homeric Hymn to Demeter,

231-55; Homeric Hymn to Delian Apollo, 12-4, 100; Iliad 1.493-530.

20. Cf. Demophoon's "witless" mortal parents' interference in Demeter's attempt to immor-

talize their son by nightly roasting over a fire (Homeric Hymn to Demeter, 242-65).

21. 24.110-1, 116, 157, 186, 371, 503ff, 570-86.

22. 1.352-4; Slatkin, Power of Thetis, 102; "PPT," 147-50.

23. The lines (9.458-61) that describe Phoinix's abortive attempt to kill his father are not

found in any manuscript, although they are quoted by Plutarch, who says that Aristarchus cut

them out because of their impropriety, and they are included in the Oxford Classical Text edition

and in Lattimore's translation: Malcolm M. Willcock, A Companion to the Iliad Based on the Translation by Richmond Lattimore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1976), 105.

24. 1.230. Agamemnon's folly (ate) (1.22-32, 9.115-6, 119).

25. 1.112-5. Agamemnon's murder, devised by Klytemnestra and carried out by her lover,

Aigisthos, Odyssey 11.409-35. In Homer, Klytemnestra herself dispatches Kassandra. In

Aeschylus's Agamemnon, it is Agamemnon's penchant for sleeping with every Chryseis at Troy,

as well as his sacrifice of their daughter Iphigenia, that arouses Klytemnestra's lethal hatred

(Agamemnon 1438-44).

26. Zeus lists some of his conquests for his chronically jealous consort (14.315-28).

27. Etymological and thematic connections among Here, meter, and heros suggest that

Hera's original and most basic function may be as "mother of heroes"; Fred W. Householder and

Gregory Nagy, "Greek," Current Trends in Linguistics 9 (1972): 770-1. In the Iliad, Hera claims

a quasi-maternal relationship to Achilles in particular and joins Achilles' mother in pressing his

claims to an honor that is above that of all mere mortals (24.56-61).

28. It is subterranean (chthonios) Zeus who actually accomplishes Amyntor's curse on his

son. Although Zeus's support for Achilles' rebellion seems to belie Agamemnon's claim to honor

from Zeus (1.175), Zeus may in fact vindicate him, as is presently discussed. At the same time,

however, Zeus contrives for his supposed proteges, such as the Trojan king Priam, to stand in

for him as victims of Hera's revenge. Heads, Zeus wins; tails, mortals lose. Or, as Dodds puts

it: "God's in his heaven; all's wrong with the world" (Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational, 32). 29. Thomas R. Walshe, "Kholos and Kotos: The Semantics of Anger in Homeric Poetry,"

(Ph.D. diss., University of California, Berkeley, 1990), chap. 3, discusses this anomaly and

centuries of scholarly debate over it.



30. Socrates as phanmakos: Morgan, Platonic Piety, 204, n. 19; becoming a sacrificial victim

as a route to immortality: Rhys Carpenter, Folktale, Fiction, and Saga in the Homeric Epics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1956), 112-4, 122-3.

31. Cf. the teachings of Socrates' mentor, Diotima: wisdom is communing with the divine,

in which are united beauty (to kalon), goodness (to agathon), and wisdom (sophia). (Cf. Apology 21d: Socrates seeks knowledge of what is kalon kagathon.) Diotima implies that the gods are

wise because, being good and beautiful themselves, they are in constant communion with these

qualities (Symp. 201d-212a). The lover of wisdom, beauty, and goodness is midway between mortal and immortal: although he does not possess these qualities, he is intelligent enough to

seek after them (202e-204b).

32. Apollo's participation in the rebellion, suppressed in 1.399ff: scholiast on 1.400 and

21.444. Leto's intercession with Zeus: Apollodorus 3.10.4; Diodorus Siculus 4.71.

33. West, Plato's "Apology of Socrates," 129.

34. Cf. the heroic combats that demonstrate Achilles' superiority to mere mortals. Even the

formulation, "he is wise who, like Socrates, realizes his ignorance," leaves Socrates superior to all other reputedly wise men because they believe themselves wise (Apol. 21a-23). On Socrates'

implicit claims to demigod status: Diskin Clay, "Socrates' Mulishness and Heroism," Phronesis

17 (1972): 53-60.

35. The "human aspiration to divine status" animating Socratic and Platonic philosophy:

Morgan, Platonic Piety, esp. 8, 21-31, 81-99.

36. On Hesiod's Theogony-a particular target of Socrates' strictures against poetry-as a

paradigm for this kind of accommodation and as a model for Aeschylus's Oresteia, see "PPT," part 2.

37. Cf. 33c-34b: Socrates' claim that if he had corrupted the young, their fathers would have

complained. The jury knew perfectly well "that the chief accuser Anytus considered himself to

be just such a parent" (Brann, "The Offense of Socrates," 12). Xenophon's Socrates traces Anytus's hostility to Socrates' suggestion that the tanner-and Athenian general-not confine

his son's education to preparation for his own servile (doulopretei) occupation, but rather to

entrust him to a worthy teacher like Socrates (Xen. Apol. 29-30).

38. Socrates' humility in the Crito: West, "Apology of Socrates," 171; Brann, "The Offense

of Socrates," 1-21, 15, 17-8; Arlene W. Saxonhouse, "The Philosophy of the Particular and the

Universality of the City: Socrates' Education of Euthyphro," Political Theory 16 (1988): 292-7.

Cf. the reversal, in Iliad 24, of Achilles' initial defiance of paternal and kingly authority.

39. Socrates' execution as the price of victory in his contest with his accusers: Greenberg, "Socrates' Choice," 68-72, 76-7, 81.

40. In the Apology, Plato deliberately shows us a Socrates who "once at least, was truly

dangerous" to the laws of Athens (Brann, "The Offense of Socrates," 20-1).

41. Phaedo 106e: "when death comes to a man, his mortal part, it seems, dies, butthe immortal

part goes away unharmed and undestroyed ... the soul is immortal and imperishable" (athanaton

kai anolethron). Because of their exceptional purity, Socrates imagines, philosophers will not only

escape punishment, they will live without bodies in a pure and beautiful abode (114b-c). 42. Socrates implies that his habitual exposures of the incompetence of Athens' leaders and

educators are provoked-by their hubris in laying claim to a wisdom that is "more than human" (20e, cf. 23b, 29a).

43. In the Phaedo, Socrates blames the body for passions, desires, and fears that prevent the

philosopher from beholding the truth. Only with death and consequent separation from the body

is wisdom possible (66c-e).

44. Stone, The Trial of Socrates, esp. chap. 9. Leo Strauss and his students tend to declare Socrates guilty as charged because philosophy is inherently subversive, but not in any way unjust



or mistaken: Strauss, "On Plato's Apology," 41, 44, 47. Plato's "true Apology of Socrates," the

Republic, "tacitly admits the truth of the charges" against him. Categorically superior to the

many, Socrates teaches young men to "despise" Athens, its laws, and its "ignorant" jurors.

Although Socrates is innocent of injustice, the uninitiated cannot see this. 'There must be a

revolution in men's understanding of justice for just deeds to be recognized as such": "Interpre-

tive Essay," in The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom (New York: Basic Books, 1968),

307-12; Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, 275-6. Also Brann, "The Offense of

Socrates," 12-3, 19-21; West, "Apology of Socrates," 71.

45. For a similar comedy of innocence, this time with Plato himself as the unjustly maligned

protagonist, we have his account in the Seventh Letter of his attempts to install Dion as the tyrant

of Syracuse. Plato justifies Dion's takeover of Dionysius II's throne as a response to the latter's outrageously insulting accusation that Plato and Dion had designs on his throne-when all they

had planned was Dion's selfless acceptance of the burden of ruling Dionysius II's domain as a

philosopher king. Nor does Dion's subsequent assassination of a more popular rival prevent Plato

from comparing him to the innocent Socrates, as one who would rather suffer than do wrong

(Seventh Letter 333b-c, 334a, 334d-e, 345c-346a, 350b-352a, cf. 324e-325c).

46. Irreconcilable conflicts, incommensurable goods: James Redfield, Nature and Culture

in the Iliad: The Tragedy of Hektor (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975), 93-5, 166,

219-20; Martha C. Nussbaum, Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and

Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 39-42, 89-104; Euben, TPT, 36,

233, 235ff. 47. As Westpoints out ("Apology of Socrates," 102), Socrates faults not only men like Anytus,

who believe in the competence of any Athenian gentleman to teach virtue, but sophists as well

for "mindless acceptance of tradition and common opinion."

48. Achilles calls his fellow Achaians "nonentities" for putting up with Agamemnon's unjust

treatment. He must say exactly what seems best to him, regardless of Agamemnon's threats or

his friends' entreaties (Iliad 1.76-91, 1.231-9, 9.,309-14; cf. Apol. 32a-e, 36b-c; Crito 46b).

49. In the Crito, Socrates reports a dream that foretells his death: a beautiful woman tells

him that he will come to Phthia in three days' time. Because Phthia is the fatherland to which

Achilles says he will return in three days (Iliad 9.363), and Thetis both foretells her son's death

and longs to welcome him home to his father's halls (Iliad 9.410ff, 18.441), Socrates appears to

identify with Achilles and to interpret his death as a reunion with Achilles' divine mother.

50. Rep. 571-5, 571b. 51. Bloom: just as "Achilles is perfection" and therefore rightly the master of other men (an

arresting political theory), so "no one wants Socrates to be ruled by inferior men" (Bloom, The

Closing of the American Mind, 265, cf. 274-5, 282, 283, 290). 52. A contrasting view: Arist. Pol. 1276b 20-30, 1277b 10-30, 1318b-1319a.

Richard Holway received his doctorate from the University of California, Berkeley, in

1989. He is history and social sciences editor at the University Press of Virginia.


A revised version of this essay serves as the epilogue to his book, Becoming Achilles: Child-sacrifice, War, and Misrule in the Iliad and Beyond. (Harvard Center for Hellenic studies/Lexington Books series, Greek Studies: Interdisciplinary Approaches, edited by Gregory Nagy, 2012) http://becomingachilles.com/https://www.amazon.com/Becoming-Achilles-Child-Sacrifice-Interdisciplinary-Approaches/dp/0739146912

Documents

Achilles, Socrates, and Democracy