Having dwelt at some length on the life and compositions of Plato, I now proceed to place in comparison with him some other members of the Sokratic philosophical family: less eminent, indeed, than the illustrious author of the Republic, yet still men of marked character, ability, and influence.[1] Respecting one of the brethren, Xenophon, who stands next to Plato in celebrity, I shall say a few words separately in my next and concluding chapter.
[1] Dionysius of Halikarnassus contrasts Plato with τὸ Σωκράτους διδασκαλεῖον πᾶν (De Adm. Vi Dic. Demosthen. p. 956.) Compare also Epistol. ad Cn. Pomp. p. 762, where he contrasts the style and phraseology of Plato with that of the Σωκρατικοὶ διάλογοι generally.
Influence exercised by Sokrates over his companions.
The ascendancy of Sokrates over his contemporaries was powerfully exercised in more than one way. He brought into vogue new subjects both of indefinite amplitude, and familiar as well as interesting to every one. On these subjects, moreover, he introduced, or at least popularised, a new method of communication, whereby the relation of teacher and learner, implying a direct transfer of ready-made knowledge from the one to the other, was put aside. He substituted an interrogatory process, at once destructive and suggestive, in which the teacher began by unteaching and the learner by unlearning what was supposed to be already known, for the purpose of provoking in the learner’s mind a self-operative energy of thought, and an internal generation of new notions. Lastly, Sokrates worked forcibly upon the minds of several friends, who were in the habit of attending him when he talked in the market-place or the palæstra. Some tried to copy his wonderful knack of colloquial cross-examination: how far they did so with success or reputation we do not know: but Xenophon says that several of them would only discourse with those who paid them a fee, and that they thus sold for considerable sums what were only small fragments obtained gratuitously from the rich table of their master.[2] There were moreover several who copied the general style of his colloquies by composing written dialogues. And thus it happened that the great master, — he who passed his life in the oral application of his Elenchus, without writing anything, — though he left no worthy representative in his own special career, became the father of numerous written dialogues and of a rich philosophical literature.[3]
[2] Xenophon, Memor. i. 2, 60. ὧν τινὲς μικρὰ μέρη παρ’ ἐκείνου προῖκα λαβόντες πολλοῦ τοῖς ἄλλοις ἐπώλουν, καὶ οὐκ ἦσαν ὥσπερ ἐκεῖνος δημοτικοί· τοῖς γὰρ μὴ ἔχουσι χρήματα διδόναι οὐκ ἤθελον διαλέγεσθαι.
[3] We find a remarkable proof how long the name and conception of Sokrates lasted in the memory of the Athenian public, as having been the great progenitor of the philosophy and philosophers of the fourth century B.C. in Athens. It was about 306 B.C., almost a century after the death of Sokrates, that Democharês (the nephew of the orator Demosthenes) delivered an oration before the Athenian judicature for the purpose of upholding the law proposed by Sophokles, forbidding philosophers or Sophists to lecture without a license obtained from the government; which law, passed a year before, had determined the secession of all the philosophers from Athens until the law was repealed. In this oration Democharês expatiated on the demerits of many philosophers, their servility, profligate ambition, rapacity, want of patriotism, &c., from which Athenæus makes several extracts. Τοιοῦτοι εἰσιν οἱ ἀπὸ φιλοσοφίας στρατηγοί· περὶ ὧν Δημοχάρης ἔλεγεν, — Ὥσπερ ἐκ θύμβρας οὐδεὶς ἂν δύναιτο κατασκευάσαι λόγχην, οὔδ’ ἐκ Σωκράτους στρατιώτην ἄμεμπτον.
Demetrius Phalereus also, in or near that same time, composed a Σωκράτους ἀπολογίαν (Diog. La. ix. 37-57). This shows how long the interest in the personal fate and character of Sokrates endured at Athens.
Besides Plato and Xenophon, whose works are known to us, we hear of Alexamenus, Antisthenes, Æschines, Aristippus, Bryson, Eukleides, Phædon, Kriton, Simmias, Kebês, &c., as having composed dialogues of this sort. All of them were companions of Sokrates; several among them either set down what they could partially recollect of his conversations, or employed his name as a dramatic speaker of their own thoughts. Seven of these dialogues were ascribed to Æschines, twenty-five to Aristippus, seventeen to Kriton, twenty-three to Simmias, three to Kebês, six to Eukleides, four to Phædon. The compositions of Antisthenes were far more numerous: ten volumes of them, under a variety of distinct titles (some of them probably not in the form of dialogues) being recorded by Diogenes.[4] Aristippus was the first of the line of philosophers called Kyrenaic or Hedonic, afterwards (with various modifications) Epikurean: Antisthenes, of the Cynics and Stoics: Eukleides, of the Megaric school. It seems that Aristippus, Antisthenes, Eukleides, and Bryson, all enjoyed considerable reputation, as contemporaries and rival authors of Plato: Æschines, Antisthenes (who was very poor), and Aristippus, are said to have received money for their lectures; Aristippus being named as the first who thus departed from the Sokratic canon.[5]
[4] Diogenes Laert. 1. 47-61-83, vi. 15; Athenæ. xi. p. 505 C.