Socrates: A Man for Our Times Read Free Page B

insolence and vulgarity, are all reflected in the face and in the attitudes of the body, whether still or in motion, and can be captured by the artist.” This observation is all the more remarkable in that Socrates disliked allowing his emotions to show in his face. Four centuries later, Cicero, who seems to have known a lot about him, said that to show fears or appetites on your face was undignified: “Always keep the same expression, like Socrates.”
    While we do not know for sure if Socrates ever worked as a stone carver or whether he had any other manual occupation, we can be certain of one thing: He was a soldier, and an admirable one. This is attested by various references in Plato and Xenophon, and by other sources. Socrates had strong views about the use of force, as we shall see. But he was not a pacifist. Bertrand Russell’s rejection of participation in World War I would have been alien to him, and he would have made short work of the specious arguments with which Russell sought to persuade others from serving (and which landed him in jail). As a citizen of Athens, which he loved, Socrates felt it a duty to fight her battles, in his middle rank as a hoplite. I think it likely he saw service as a young man, though there is no specific evidence of it. But we know he was at the siege of Potidaea, a strongly fortified port and former colony of Corinth. As a member of the Delian League, it was subject to Athenian leadership. Its tribute, or contribution to the common war fund, was increased to fifteen talents in 434 B.C. It revolted, and Athens besieged and reduced the city in 430 B.C., sending soldier-colonists ( cleruchs ) to occupy it. Socrates was there. He was then in his late thirties. He also fought at Amphipolis on the North Aegean coast, a place colonized by Athens in 437–436 B.C.—it was near the gold and silver mines of the Pangaean district and commercially important. In the early stages of the Peloponnesian War, Amphipolis surrendered to Sparta without a fight, and Athens went to a lot of trouble trying to get it back. The future historian Thucydides, then a young officer—he was ten years Socrates’ junior—was involved at Amphipolis too. Both these great men, though they differed on many things, notably religion, agreed on their devotion to Athens and its importance, and Thucydides’ clarity of historical causation and fair-mindedness may owe much to Socrates. But there is no clear evidence of their contact.
    In 432 B.C. Socrates fought in the painful Athenian retreat from Potidaea. It was deep winter and bitterly cold. Socrates showed remarkable endurance and courage, all the more admirable because he was then forty-six, almost an old man by the normal reckoning of those days. We have eyewitness evidence of Socrates’ conduct in this campaign from his young aristocratic friend Alcibiades. He makes three distinct points. First he says that Socrates saved his life by standing over him when he was wounded and driving off the enemy, regardless of his own safety. Second, he says that Socrates, fully armored and carrying his weapons, was a formidable figure, even in retreat. He says there was something about his bearing that made the enemy leave him severely alone: They sensed that if they had tried to seize him, they would have “met with desperate resistance.” Third, he testified to Socrates’ amazing hardiness. He wore thin clothing despite the cold and went barefoot even in the snow. No discomfort or shortage of food or drink seemed to dismay him. He was a splendid and cheerful campaigner.
    Socrates’ indifference to physical well-being—clothing, food, drink, warmth, and shelter, everything except company, which he always relished and needed—was a characteristic throughout his life and is well attested by a variety of sources. It seems to have been partly temperament and partly self-training. He decided early in life to be a teacher or, as he would have put it, an “examiner” of men