Socrates: A Man for Our Times Read Free

pagan festival by the Christian Roman Emperor Theodosius I. And of course they were a pagan event for, like almost all Greek institutions, their origins were religious. Socrates was fond of reminding young men that the point of an Olympic victory was not the honor and money received by the victors, but service to god, in the shape of Zeus, whose magnificent giant statue of gold and ivory at Olympus was created during his lifetime by his friend Phidias. The race on foot the length of the stadium was the first and remained the chief event, but other tests of speed, strength, and endurance were added—including boxing, wrestling, a race for men in armor, and chariot and horse races. Both umpires and competitors took an oath of fair play and justice, but decisions were often challenged, and crowds booed and sometimes attacked the umpires. In early times, Sparta, the first city to train its athletes professionally, just as it took warfare with deadly seriousness, usually emerged the overall victor, but gradually other cities, not least Athens, produced fierce competition. Money began to talk. Socrates’ rich young friend Alcibiades, for instance, entered six chariot teams for the Olympics, and carried off first, second, and fourth prizes. We know this because a complete list of the Olympic winners, from 776 B.C. to A.D. 217, was drawn up by Julius Africanus, and preserved by the church historian Eusebius.
    The competitive spirit spread to every aspect of Greek life: poetry, drama, music, public speaking or rhetoric, and art. In most, Athens was incomparably the leader, and its annual city contests, especially in tragic and comic drama, were more important than any Panhellenic occasion. Socrates was concerned in such events, being a friend of Aristophanes, who won the first prize for comedy three times, and especially of Euripides, youngest of the three great Athenian tragedians. Euripides, though fifteen years Socrates’ senior, came to him for advice, and there is a tradition that Socrates had a hand in his plays, perhaps with his trio containing Hippolytus, which won first prize in 428 B.C.
    The competitive atmosphere in Athens and the pride Athenians took in their city were much enhanced by external events in the early years of Socrates’ century. The Persian Empire, the greatest the world had ever known, west of China, was a constant threat to Greece, especially after Athens encouraged her fellow Ionian cities in what is now western Turkey to revolt against their Persian overlords. Persia invaded Greece but was repulsed by 10,000 Athenians at the Battle of Marathon (490 B.C.). According to Socrates’ friend the historian Herodotus, the Persians lost 6,400 killed, against Athenian losses of 192, making it one of the great victories of antiquity. Among those who fought in the battle was Aeschylus, senior of the three great tragedians, and it is possible Socrates’ father, Sophroniscus, was there too, as a hoplite or heavy infantryman.
    The Persians invaded again in 480, in enormous strength—three hundred thousand men and six hundred ships. Despite heroic efforts by Leonidas and his three hundred Spartans, who died defending the pass of Thermopylae, the Persians pressed on, Athens was evacuated, and the city burned, the sacred buildings on the Acropolis being reduced to rubble. However, combined Spartan and Athenian forces routed the Persian army at the Battle of Plataea. Athens alone, under the leadership of Xanthippus, (father of Pericles, who was to dominate Athens for much of Socrates’ life), won a decisive naval war, and by 479 Athens had established herself as the leading power among the Greeks. In 477 Athens founded the Delian League of Greek States, confirming her ascendancy and laying the basis for an Athenian Empire. By 463 B.C. Miltiades’ son Cimon had ended any threat from Persia and the period of Athenian greatness had begun. By then Socrates was a boy of seven.
    The city-state in which he grew up was by