The historical veracity of the Phaedo can be now corroborated by further considerations. Plato's enumeration of a number of distinguished followers of Socrates who were present when he died in itself entitles us to surmise that Socrates’ last philosophic discourse was well remembered and much talked about. This conjecture is supported by Xenophon who says in the last book of his Memorabilia that ‘it is agreed that no person in human memory bore their death more nobly than Socrates’ (homologeitai gar oudena pô tôn mnêmoneuomenôn anthrôpôn kallion thanaton enenkein), and that during the thirty days he spent in prison after the trial ‘he continued to live exactly as before, as all his intimate acquaintances could clearly see’ (kai ton chronon touton hapasi tois sunêthesi phaneros egeneto ouden alloioteron diabious ê ton emprosthen chronon, IV. viii. 2). This can mean only one thing: Socrates spent his time in prison in philosophic discussions with his friends. In Plato's dialogue, Phaedo says that on the last day as on the preceding days he and others visited Socrates in prison and spent the day with him (59d): ‘we were occupied with philosophy, as usual’ (en philosophiai hêmôn ontôn hôsper eiôthemen, 59a3). Both Xenophon and Plato agree that the last day’s discourse was nevertheless something quite special. Xenophon says that throughout his whole life Socrates was admired for his cheerfulness and serenity, and the more so on his last day. He asks: ‘How, then, could a man die more nobly (kallion)? Or what death could be nobler than the death most nobly faced? What death more blessed (eudaimonesteros) than the noblest (tou kallistou)?’ (IV. viii. 3) In Plato’s dialogue Phaedo emphasizes the blessedness that Socrates radiated on that day: ‘I could hardly believe that I was present at the death of a friend, and therefore I did not pity him; he died so fearlessly, and his words and bearing were so noble and gracious, that to me he appeared blessed (eudaimôn, 58e)’.
Though the account of both Plato and Xenophon agree that those who were present viewed Socrates’ last philosophic discourse as an extraordinary event crowning an extraordinary life, Xenophon tells us nothing concerning the content of Socrates' last day discussions, and so it may be argued that his testimony is useless concerning the question of the historicity of Plato's account of Socrates’ last hours. And yet, this argument can be countered by a question: 'If Socrates' last philosophic discourse radiated cheerfulness and serenity, what else did he discuss but the questions of death and of the immortality of the soul?' This question acquires its proper force if we consider it against the background of the attempt of Socrates' friends to arrange Socrates' escape from prison, which was to be attempted as Socrates' days in prison drew to a close, with his death impending, as Plato reports on it in the Crito. This attempt, rejected by Socrates, shows the deep rooted apprehension of death that Socrates' best and closest friends and followers shared. Plato does not name himself in the Crito among those who prepared the escape plan, but his own anxiety concerning this point comes dramatically to the fore in the Apology. For after Socrates has been found guilty and the question of the penalty arose, in a desperate attempt to prevent a death sentence Plato, Crito, his son Critoboulos, and Apollodoros offered to pay thirty minae, hoping that the jurors might accept this sum of money as a sufficient penalty.
If Socrates was to spend his last day in philosophic discussion with his friends in an atmosphere of cheerfulness and serenity, he had to focus the discussion on the happy prospect of life after death, proving to them that this prospect was very real. In my view there is a direct witness who supports this account of Socrates' last hours. For Diogenes reports that Antisthenes,(17) when he was asked what was the height of human bliss, answered ‘To die happy’ (Diog. Laert. vi. 5); in giving this answer, he was pointing to Socrates' last hours. And when he maintained that 'those who would fain be immortal (tous boulomenous athanatous einai) must live piously and justly' (dein eusebôs kai dikaiôs zên, ibid.), he drew on Socrates’ last-day discourse on immortality, for this is the main thrust of Socrates’ arguments: only the soul of a man who lives piously and justly can escape from the chain of incarnations and thus of deaths (Phd. 67c-d, 80e, 83a-e).
Antisthenes' testimony can be further corroborated and elucidated by the testimony of Isocrates. In Against the Sophists, that is the pamphlet with which Isocrates opened his school of rhetoric and which must have been published only a few years after Socrates’ death, Isocrates criticizes contemporary philosophers for promising their students knowledge of what they should do in life, which would ascertain their happiness (dia tautês tês epistêmês eudaimones genêsontai, 3-4). There can be little doubt that Isocrates aims his criticism at Socrates’ disciples, for as we know from Aristotle, it was Socrates who identified virtue with knowledge (E.N. 1144b28-30). But according to Plato’s Apology, Socrates at the trial solemnly denied that he possessed the knowledge in question, ironically contrasting himself to Evenus who was offering such knowledge for the modest sum of five minae (20b-c). When Isocrates further in his pamphlet criticizes philosophers for their offering students complete virtue and happiness (sumpasan de tên aretên kai tên eudaimonian, 4) for a trifling gain (mikrou de kerdous oregomenoi monon ouk athanatous hupischnountai tous sunontas poiêsein, 3-4), he echoes Socrates’ words from his Defence. So how did it happen that Socrates’ followers a few years after Socrates’ death professed to have and dispense knowledge that guaranteed happiness? I can see only one explanation of this fact: Socrates’ emphasis on his ignorance upon which he founded his Defence was not his last word in philosophy.
Xenophon, Antisthenes, and Isocrates in their very different ways thus corroborate the historicity of the main event that according to Plato's Phaedo took place on Socrates' last day: Socrates overcame the philosophic ignorance within the framework of which all of his previous philosophical discussions had taken place. If we take this event into consideration, we can solve the riddle of Socrates’ very last words, which Plato reported in the Phaedo: ‘Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius, please pay the debt, and do not neglect it’ (118a7-8, tr. David Gallop). Asclepius was a hero and god of healing, and so most scholars agree that Socrates in his last words expressed his thanks for some kind of healing, but they differ in their opinion on what kind of healing Socrates referred to. In the Oxford edition of the dialogue David Gallop says in his note ad loc. that the offering of a cock to Asclepius is sometimes interpreted to be for healing Socrates of the sickness of human life. Gallop rejects this view, finding it incompatible with the 90e2-91a1 passage, in which Socrates urges his friends to strive manfully and with the help of sound philosophic discourse to become healthy for the sake of their whole future life. Gallop suggests that it is simpler to take the words as referring to an actual debt, incurred in some connection unknown. He explains away Socrates’ ‘we owe’ by claiming that Socrates might refer to himself in plural, for which he refers to 116d4. But this reference is highly problematic, as I shall show by focusing attention on the circumstances within which Socrates at 116d4 takes recourse to the first person plural.
At 116b the prison guard enters the prison cell to announce that it is time for Socrates to die. He says ‘you know the message I’ve come to bring: good-bye (chaire), then, and try to bear the inevitable as easily as you can (hôs raista, 116d1).’ Socrates replies: ‘Good-bye (chaire) to you too, and we too shall do so.’ (116d3-4). The problem lies in the translation of the Greek chaire, for chairein means ‘to rejoice’, ‘to fare well’, and as such it is used both as a greeting at meeting someone, esp. in the morning, and as a greeting at leave-taking, where it can be translated as ‘good-bye’. The prison guard undoubtedly uses the word chaire as the obligatory ‘good-bye’, but when Socrates replies ‘You too chaire’, he gives the word chaire its proper meaning. He means ‘You too be well’ (or ‘rejoice’), for he adds ‘and we too shall do so’ (kai hêmeis tauta poiêsomen, 116d3-4), where tauta poiêsomen – ‘we too shall do so’ – means in the given context 'we shall be well, and try to bear the inevitable as easily as we can'. In speaking thus Socrates speaks on behalf of himself and of his friends. The whole discourse in the Phaedo is about Socrates’ welcoming death as a joyful event, as the beginning of an incomparably better life, and about his enabling his friends to participate in his happiness by sharing his thoughts and his philosophic arguments, for philosophy is the right preparation for death (61b8, 115b9-10). The philosophic discourse in which they all took part gave Socrates the confidence that he and his friends would fare well and bear the inevitable as well as possible. Socrates’ ‘we’ in his answer to the jailor and the ‘we’ in his last words are indeed closely linked; Socrates' 'we' refers both to himself and to his friends.(18)
A quarter of a century separates Gallop’s Oxford edition of the Phaedo from his contribution to the Platonic Symposium devoted to this dialogue in 1999 in Prague. In Prague, presumably after much thought, Gallop offered his listeners a different interpretation of Socrates’ last words, taking Socrates’ ‘we’ as referring to the company of Socrates’ friends, not merely to Socrates. In doing so he maintained that as a result of Socrates’ inquiry into the truth about the soul ‘the emotions of pity and fear have been transmuted into a confident, and even joyful, acceptance of Socrates’ end. The conversation has restored the company - and by extension its readers - to a state of spiritual health, for which “we owe a cock to Asclepius”.’(19)
This is a step in the right direction, but I have a difficulty with Gallop’s specification of the ‘illness’ from which the company has been healed. For on Phaedo’s account, when Socrates drank the hemlock, his friends, who until then had been fairly well able to restrain their tears, could do so no longer: ‘Apollodorus, who even earlier had been continuously in tears, now burst forth into such a storm of weeping and grieving, that he made everyone present break down except Socrates himself' (117d3-6). Socrates reproved them: ‘What a way to behave, my strange friends! Why, it was mainly for this reason that I sent women away, so that they shouldn’t make this sort of trouble; in fact, I’ve heard one should die in silence. Come now, calm yourself and have strength' (117d7-e2, tr. Gallop). Ashamed, Socrates’ friends stopped crying (117e3-4). Did Socrates want his friends to offer a cock to Asclepius because his sharp rebuke had worked? Even if this were the case, the difficulty concerning Socrates’ ‘we’ would remain unsolved, for now Socrates would be excluded from his ‘we’, for he neither burst into tears when drinking the hemlock, nor suffered from emotional disturbance at any earlier stage in the dialogue.
If the healing for which Socrates and his friends owed a cock to Asclepius refers to an illness that had manifested itself within the framework of the discourse that took place on Socrates’ last day then it must refer to an illness from which both Socrates and his friends suffered, and from which they were delivered in the course of the discussion. The illness that they shared was their philosophic ignorance concerning the soul and its immortality, as becomes clear when Socrates says ‘that we’re not yet sound ourselves’ (hoti hêmeis oupô hugiôs echomen, 90e2). The seriousness of Socrates’ illness will become clear to us if we recall the Apology in which Socrates publicly avowed that he suffered from ignorance (all' ou gar epistamai, Pl. Ap. 20c3), considering himself nevertheless free from the worst form of it, that is of thinking that he knew what in fact he did not know (21d); (20) of this ignorance he tried to liberate his interlocutors, especially his fellow citizens and his friends (29d-30a).(21) But the message to Evenus with which Socrates introduced his last day inquiry in the Phaedo indicates that at that stage of the discourse he had not succeeded in fully liberating himself even from this worst kind of ignorance. For he urged Evenus to follow him as quickly as possible (61b-62a) as if he already knew that the soul was immortal. And although we may assume that the certainty with which Socrates pronounced his message to Evenus was the result of much thought devoted to the subject during the thirty days Socrates spent in prison face to face with approaching death, Simmias’ and Cebes’ questioning of this certainty showed that it was not grounded in knowledge. For at the beginning of his inquiry into the immortality of the soul Socrates appears to believe that the similarity of the invisible soul to the invisible true being as such guarantees the immortality of the soul (61c-69e). But for Cebes and Simmias this is not enough; they require a proof that the soul survives the body (70a-b). Socrates’ search for it shows that he does not have a satisfactory proof to hand at this stage.
Chapter 1 part 5...