“ Socrates used certain passages from Homer to teach his young followers to be violent and tyrannical. . . ” Is this a “scoop" — i f I may use so unscholarly a word? I believe so. But to appreciate it, one must understand what Homer meant to the Greeks. He was their Bible. And with them, as with us, the devil could quote Scripture to his purpose. A quotation from Homer was effective as Holy Writ, and the two omissions Xenophon makes are of two passages which would have infuriated an Athenian democrat, but would have delighted an antidemocratic aristocrat — because they would seem fully to justify violent methods in putting down the democracy. * * * Can you tell us what was the Homeric episode referred to by the “accuser" in Xenophon? I t is in the second book of the “ Iliad.” The siege of Troy has been going on for nine years. The homesick and weary troops, just recently devastated by a plague, make a mutinous rush for the ships, determined to set sail for home. Odysseus, the man of many wiles, intervenes to stem the panic. How does Xenophon handle the episode? He makes his quotations so minimal and selective as to blur the point of the accusation, and make it easier for Socrates to evade it. Xenophon quotes lines 188 to 191, and then skips to lines 198 to 202 from Book II of the “ Iliad.” In lines 188 to 191, Homer describes how Odysseus spoke “with gentle words” to the chieftains and aristocrats, while he tells us in lines 198 to 202 how differently he dealt with the common soldiers. When the angry hero encountt red “a man of the people,” Odysseus “struck him with his staff,” calling him “a worthless fellow” and ordering him to turn back from the ships. How would an Athenian react to this scene? Very negatively. He was not used to being treated as an inferior either in peace or war. Xenophon’s account in the “Anabasis” of how he led his 10,000 mercenary Greek troops across Persia has been justly called a picture of “a democracy on the march.” Was anything important omitted in quoting these lines? Yes, Xenophon omitted the last four lines of the speech made by Odysseus as he struck and reviled the common soldiers. In those four omitted lines Odysseus attacked the idea of democracy altogether. Homer in these lines set forth for the first time in Western literature the doctrine of the divine right of kings. Here are the lines, in literal translation. Odysseus tells the common soldiers: We Archaeans can't all be kings here It is not good for the many to rule Let one man rule, one man be king. To whom the son [Zeus] o f wily Cronos Has given the sceptre and the judgments That he may take counsel for you. That’s the doctrine of one-man rule, and that’s just what Critias tried to impose on Athens. Xenophon could have denied that Socrates used these lines, or approved them. Instead Xenophon omitted them. The omission is a confession. These famous lines on kingship were too obviously anti-democratic teaching. What was the third o f the significant omissions to which you referred? Xenophon omitted any mention of the assembly called by King Agamemnon to deal with the near mutiny. Assemblies are frequent in the “ Iliad.” This one turned out to be unique. It was the only assembly in all of Homer where a common soldier spoke up in the debate. His name was Thersites, or The Brash One. To an Athenian, as to us, he thus represents the first stirrings of democracy in the Homeric assemblies. What happened to Thersites? Odysseus beat the bold commoner until he bled, humiliated him in front of the army and threatened to kill him if he ever spoke up again. How does Homer treat this scene? With approval. Homer sang his great lays in the halls of the rich and powerful, and clearly shows whose side he is on. Homer does not make Thersites a hero, but a shrill and vulgar upstart. Few people have been as sensitive to beauty in form and in speech as the ancient Greeks. Homer paints Thersites as bandylegged, lame, hunchbacked and bald. One wonders how such a cripple ever got into the army at all. The words Thersites uses are made as repulsive as his appearance. Homer calls them akosma. This is the negative of kosmos, whence our words “cosmetics” and “cosmos” derive. The word implies disorder and lack of grace. So what do you make o f these omissions ? The accuser had charged that Socrates used certain passages from Homer to teach his young aristocratic followers to be violent and tyrannical. In dealing with this mutinous episode, Xenophon omitted what the Athenian democrats would have regarded as the most subversive part of it: the four lines on the divine right of kings, and Odysseus's use of violence to suppress free speech in the assembly. Homer was saying that the common people had no right to be heard. There could be no more sensitive point with the Athenian democrats. The right to speak freely in the assembly was the foundation stone of Athenian democracy. Until the reforms of Solon, two centuries before the trial of Socrates, the common people of Athens could neither speak nor vote in the assembly. And again, just five years before the trial of Socrates, they had been forcibly deprived of this precious right by the dictatorship of Critias. In their eyes, this episode in Homer would seem to justify the violent tyranny they had so recently overthrown. I think that is why Xenophon omitted it from his defense of Socrates. They were too damaging a part of the prosecution’s case. * * * So you think Socrates was condemned because the Athenians believed his teachings had helped to produce such tyrants as Critias? No, not exactly. The case is more complicated. Socrates was protected from such a prosecution by the amnesty instituted by those who overthrew and killed Critias. The dictatorship was crushed by a coalition of the democrats with moderate oligarchs who had been driven into opposition by the lawless extremism of the Thirty. Thpy took an oath to forget past offenses. The amnesty covered everybody but the remaining Thirty and their leading officials. To prosecute Socrates as the teacher of Critias would have been a violation of that solemn oath. How do you know the oath was always honored? All the surviving sources attest to it, and nowhere do Plato or Xenophon charge, as they otherwise would, that the prosecution of Socrates was a violation of the amnesty. The most striking testimonial to this is in Aristotle’s treatise on the Constitution of Athens where he says that the Athenians, after restoring their democracy, “blotted out recriminations with regard to the past” and behaved both “privately and publicly toward those past disasters” in “ the most completely honorable and statesmanlike manner of any people in history.” That was written a generation after the trial of Socrates’. So what conclusion do you draw? When Xenophon discusses the charge that Socrates used certain passages from Homer and other poets to teach his pupils to be lawbreakers and tyrannical, he had to be referring to teachings which continued after the restoration o f the democracy. Athens fdlt that Socrates was still inculcating disrespect for its democratic institutions, and feared an attempt to overthrow the democracy again. Do you think this justified the condemnation o f Socrates? No. The 501-man jury itself was deeply troubled and reached its verdict of guilty only by a narrow margin. But these fresh insights give us a glimpse of the political realities and extenuating circumstances which Plato, who hated democracy, did his best to hide — and which his “Apology” has so successfully obscured for 2,500 years. Reprinted by permission of New York Times magazine and I. F. Stone. % i hammered <; flutes ♦ guit mers ♦ appalachian dulcimers ♦ recorders >mandolins ♦ banjos ♦ fiddles ♦ whistles piccolos ♦ unusual folk instruments of many varieties books and records of traditional cekic and other folk musics. ARTICHOKE MUSIC 10:30-5:30* monday-saturday *722 northwest 21st ♦ 248-0356 19
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