Category: Socrates

Today I visited the archeological site of Plato’s Academy.  Around twelve years after the execution of Socrates, Plato founded a philosophical school in the suburb of Athens known as the Academy, after which it took its name.  His school must have consisted of one or more lecture halls.  It was located in public grounds, basically a sort of park, that consisted mainly of a gymnasium with a wrestling school and various shrines and other buildings. Women were not allowed into the grounds of ancient Greek gymnasia but it’s said that two women disguised themselves as men in order to attend Plato’s lectures there.

The grounds are now referred to as the “Academy Park”, although originally it was known simply as the Academy, and the philosophical school later came to adopt the same name.  One theory is that the name originally meant “far away deme” or suburb, as it was located outside the ancient city walls of Athens.  (Later a story evolved that it was named after a hero called Academus.)

There’s a nice herm (statue) of Plato close to the park.  Two years ago a small “digital museum” was created nearby, which I also visited.  There’s a short film showing several local people who talk about how economically depressed the area is and that the site of the Academy was neglected until recently because many people didn’t even realize its significance.   One older man said something like “There used to be factories here and now we have thirty hairdressers and thirty pharmacies, and that’s about all.”  In the grounds of the Academy Park, where the ruins are located, children were playing, two guys lurking awkwardly beside the ruined palaestra (wrestling school) were drinking beer and smoking a pipe, and a middle-aged woman on a bench nearby, who looked very dishevelled, was talking to herself.  There’s a bit of litter and graffiti but it’s not too bad.  Still, it made me a little sad to see some of these locations.  On the other hand, the beautiful Acropolis Museum built in 2009 is arguably a much better example of how Greece’s cultural heritage can best be preserved.

Stoics at the Academy

Plato’s most famous student at the Academy was Aristotle but after Plato’s death it was his cousin, Speusippus, who became the next head of the school, known as a “scholarch”.  He was succeeded by Xenocrates of Chalcedon.  We’re told that Xenocrates more would retire into himself, in private contemplation, several times each day, and that he assigned whole hour each day to silence.  Xenocrates was succeeded, in turn, by Polemo, who experienced a sort of conversion after hearing him speak.

In his youth [Polemo] was so profligate and dissipated that he actually carried about with him money to procure the immediate gratification of his desires, and would even keep sums concealed in lanes and alleys. Even in the Academy a piece of three obols was found close to a pillar, where he had buried it for the same purpose. And one day, by agreement with his young friends, he burst into the school of Xenocrates quite drunk, with a garland on his head. Xenocrates, however, without being at all disturbed, went on with his discourse as before, the subject being temperance. The lad, as he listened, by degrees was taken in the toils. He became so industrious as to surpass all the other scholars, and rose to be himself head of the school…  (Diogenes Laertius)

Although Polemo got into some trouble as a young man, through philosophy he later acquired a reputation for having such an unshakeably calm demeanour that he sounds like a true precursor of the Stoics.

…from the time when he began to study philosophy, he acquired such strength of character as always to maintain the same unruffled calm of demeanour. Nay more, he never lost control of his voice. This in fact accounts for the fascination which he exercised over Crantor.  Certain it is that, when a mad dog bit him in the back of his thigh, he did not even turn pale, but remained undisturbed by all the clamour which arose in the city at the news of what had happened.

We’re told that he withdrew from society and confined himself to the Garden of the Academy (the surrounding park) where his students built themselves little huts so they could live near the Shrine of the Muses and the lecture hall of the Academy, where they went to hear Polemo speak.

Zeno of Citium, the founder of Stoicism, was originally (and perhaps mainly) a Cynic philosopher, although he also studied at other schools of Athenian philosophy, including spending ten years attending Plato’s Academy, under Xenocrates and later Polemo.  We’re told that even when Zeno was making progress as a philosopher himself, he was so free from conceit that he would still go to the Academy to study there under Xenocrates and later Polemo. Polemo made the jibe that Zeno was sneaking into the grounds of the Academy through the garden door, stealing their teachings and giving them “a Phoenician make-up.”

Today I visited the ruins of the Lyceum palaestra, or wrestling school, in Athens.  Pomegranate trees grow around the edge of the archeological site and there were butterflies.  (These are some of my photos of the site.)  The Lyceum was named after Apollo Lyceus, Apollo “the wolf-god”, to whom the whole area was dedicated.  He seems to have been a rural version of the god, who helped shepherds protect their flocks from wolves.  Historians aren’t sure of its exact boundaries but the area known as the Lyceum was quite large, lay just outside the city wall to the east of Athens, and encompassed a gymnasium, running track, religious shrines, various other buildings, and extensive gardens where visitors could walk in the shade provided by the trees.

We normally associate the Lyceum with Aristotle.  After initially studying at Plato’s Academy, Aristotle parted ways with Plato.  He then left Athens and on his return, in 335 BC, finding that the Academy had a new head, Xenocrates, he rented some rooms at the Lyceum and founded a school there.  It was also called the “Peripatetic” (walking, or strolling) school because he allegedly used to lecture while walking around the grounds of the Lyceum.  Diogenes Laertius says that Aristotle lectured there for thirteen years before retiring to Chalcis in 321-322 BC.

However, philosophers had been teaching at the Lyceum long before Aristotle set up his school there.  According to Plato, two or three generations before Aristotle, Sophists including Protagoras and Prodicus, the two most famous among them, used to lecture and give speeches at the Lyceum.  It seems that Socrates would also frequently spend his days there discussing philosophy with the Sophists and others.  And as we’ll see, the Stoics would later teach there as well.

Socrates and the Sophists at the Lyceum

According to Diogenes Laertius, the first famous Sophist, Protagoras, gave a public reading of his controversial book On the Gods at the Lyceum, at least according to some accounts.   (Or some say it was read in public by one of his students.)

As to the gods, I have no means of knowing either that they exist or that they do not exist. For many are the obstacles that impede knowledge, both the obscurity of the question and the shortness of human life.

That caused some controversy as you can imagine.  We’re told that, incensed by these words, the Athenians expelled Protagoras and burnt his writings in the agora, the city centre or marketplace of Athens.

However, according to Plato, Socrates would often walk to the Lyceum to discuss philosophy with the Sophists teaching there.  Socrates mentions being on his way to the Lyceum in Plato’s Lysis, returning from it in the Euthyphro, and in the Euthydemus he recounts a conversation he had there with two young Sophists.

Crito: Who was the person, Socrates, with whom you were talking yesterday at the Lyceum? There was such a crowd around you that I could not get within hearing, but I caught a sight of him over their heads, and I made out, as I thought, that he was a stranger with whom you were talking: who was he? […]
Socrates: He whom you mean, Crito, is Euthydemus; and on my left hand there was his brother Dionysodorus, who also took part in the conversation.
Crito: Neither of them are known to me, Socrates; they are a new importation of Sophists, as I should imagine. Of what country are they, and what is their line of wisdom? (Euthydemus)

In the pseudo-Platonic dialogue called the Eryxias, Critias is saying that if an intemperate man cannot refrain from over-indulging in food and drink, and other pleasures, then, paradoxically, it’s better for him to be poor than rich so that he can’t gratify his unhealthy desires.  In other words, as the Stoics later argued, money is neither good nor bad in itself, but can be used either well by the wise or badly by the foolish.  Socrates says that he heard the famous Sophist Prodicus using the same argument the day before in the Lyceum:

I heard that very argument used in the Lyceum yesterday by a wise man, Prodicus of Ceos; but the audience thought that he was talking mere nonsense, and no one could be persuaded that he was speaking the truth. And when at last a certain talkative young gentleman came in, and, taking his seat, began to laugh and jeer at Prodicus, tormenting him and demanding an explanation of his argument, he gained the ear of the audience far more than Prodicus. (Eryxias)

At the end of Plato’s Symposium, when everyone else is drunk and has fallen asleep, we’re told that Socrates leaves early in the morning to spend the rest of his day at the Lyceum, presumably discussing philosophy:

Socrates, having laid them to sleep, rose to depart; Aristodemus, as his manner was, following him. At the Lyceum he took a bath, and passed the day as usual. In the evening he retired to rest at his own home. (Symposium)

So long before Aristotle’s time, the Lyceum was associated with the Sophists and later with Socrates, who liked to go there to talk with them and their students.  What about the Stoics, though?

The Stoics at the Lyceum

After Zeno, the founder of Stoicism died, the Athenians honoured him with an official decree, which Diogenes Laertius quotes in full.   Curiously, it was permanently inscribed on two stone pillars installed at the Academy and the Lyceum, the homes of the Platonic and Aristotelian schools respectively.

Whereas Zeno of Citium, son of Mnaseas, has for many years been devoted to philosophy in the city and has continued to be a man of worth in all other respects, exhorting to virtue and temperance those of the youth who come to him to be taught, directing them to what is best, affording to all in his own conduct a pattern for imitation in perfect consistency with his teaching, it has seemed good to the people – and may it turn out well – to bestow praise upon Zeno of Citium, the son of Mnaseas, and to crown him with a golden crown according to the law, for his goodness and temperance, and to build him a tomb in the Ceramicus at the public cost. And that for the making of the crown and the building of the tomb, the people shall now elect five commissioners from all Athenians, and the Secretary of State shall inscribe this decree on two stone pillars and it shall be lawful for him to set up one in the Academy and the other in the Lyceum. And that the magistrate presiding over the administration shall apportion the expense incurred upon the pillars, that all may know that the Athenian people honour the good both in their life and after their death. Thraso of the deme Anacaea, Philocles of Peiraeus, Phaedrus of Anaphlystus, Medon of Acharnae, Micythus of Sypalettus, and Dion of Paeania have been elected commissioners for the making of the crown and the building. (Diogenes Laertius)

We’re also told that after Zeno’s death, the third head of the Stoic school, Chrysippus, actually lectured at the Lyceum, presumably in addition to speaking at the Stoa Poikile, the traditional home of the Stoic school.

Demetrius above mentioned is also our authority for the statement that Chrysippus was the first who ventured to hold a lecture-class in the open air in the Lyceum. (Diogenes Laertius)

It’s not clear what Diogenes Laertius means.  Perhaps that previous philosophers had either spoken to small groups while walking there or lectured inside buildings whereas Chrysippus was the first to hold formal lectures publicly in the grounds of Lyceum.  It’s possible, though, that he means Chrysippus was the first Stoic to hold lectures at the Lyceum, which by that time was mainly associated with the Aristotelian school, but certainly not off-limits to other philosophers.

Centuries later, the last famous Stoic, the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, would formally reintroduce a chair of philosophy at the Lyceum, after visiting Athens, a few years before his death.

The Greeks tell tourists this house carved into the Hill of the Muses is the “prison of Socrates” but there doesn’t seem to be any real evidence for that.  Still, it’s worth a visit.  You could maybe climb though the bars and imagine that you’re awaiting a cup of hemlock, if you want to relive the great philosopher’s last days.  (Here are some photos from my trip to the so-called “Prison of Socrates”.)

The Stoics were particularly interested in the way Socrates resigned himself to his fate after being condemned to death by the Athenians.  For example, Epictetus wrote:

What then is the punishment of those who do not accept? It is to be what they are. Is any person dissatisfied with being alone? let him be alone. Is a man dissatisfied with his parents? let him be a bad son, and lament. Is he dissatisfied with his children? let him be a bad father. Cast him into prison. What prison? Where he is already, for he is there against his will; and where a man is against his will, there he is in prison. So Socrates was not in prison, for he was there willingly. (Discourses, 1.12)

For the Stoics, in typically paradoxical fashion, anyone who resents his fate or craves more than he has effectively condemns himself to dwell in a psychological prison of his own making.  Socrates, by contrast, was as free as a bird, even as he sat chained in a cell.

Socrates was so indifferent to his own predicament that he spent his time discussing philosophy when his friends visited, or composing poems when alone.  This was something Epictetus saw as emblematic of his philosophical attitude toward death:

And we shall then be imitators of Socrates, when we are able to write paeans in prison. (Discourses, 2.6)

Epictetus would have his students say that it was not Socrates who was chained in prison but his body, while his mind remained as free as ever.

How strange then that Socrates should have been so treated by the Athenians. Slave, why do you say Socrates? Speak of the thing as it is: how strange that the poor body of Socrates should have been carried off and dragged to prison by stronger men, and that any one should have given hemlock to the poor body of Socrates, and that it should breathe out the life. Do these things seem strange, do they seem unjust, do you on account of these things blame God? Had Socrates then no equivalent for these things? Where then for him was the nature of good? Whom shall we listen to, you or him? And what does Socrates say? Anytus and Melitus can kill me, but they cannot hurt me: and further, he says, “If it so pleases God, so let it be.” (Discourses, 1.29)

Anytus and Melitus were the two main accusers who brought Socrates to trial.  This final part of the quote is also the closing line of the Handbook of Epictetus:

O Crito, if so it pleases the Gods, so let it be; Anytus and Melitus are able indeed to kill me, but they cannot harm me.

These two quotes, from the Crito and Apology respectively, were obviously of great significance to Epictetus and his students.  Moreover, we’re told that a one of Epictetus’ heroes, Thrasea, the leader of the Stoic Opposition, was known for saying: “Nero can kill me but he cannot harm me.”