The Role of Socrates in the Arginusae Affair
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Orestis Karatzoglou
Abstract
Sources provide conflicting accounts of the role of Socrates during the trial of the generals after the Battle of Arginusae: in Plato’s Apology and Xenophon’s Hellenica he is presented as the only πρύτανις that opposed the will of the crowd to judge the generals in a single vote. In the Gorgias and Xenophon’s Memorabilia he is elevated to the status of chairman (ἐπιστάτης). This paper revisits the possible interconnections among the sources and re-examines the suggestion that Xenophon’s version in the Memorabilia is influenced by Plato’s Gorgias, while also considering Diodorus Siculus’ narrative of these same events. It is argued that Xenophon’s agenda at Hellenica 1.7.1–16 is driven by the political aim of highlighting the deficiencies of Athenian democracy, whereas similarities between Plato’s Apology and Euryptolemus’ speech at Hellenica 1.7.16–35 encourage the inference that the latter text should be viewed against the backdrop of Socratic literature. The conclusion reached is that Socrates cannot have served as chairman and that the performance of his civic duties may not have been of such overriding importance as might initially appear.
Acknowledgements
This paper has long been in the making, therefore thanks is owed to many, first and foremost to Kirk Sanders during whose seminar on Socrates in 2012 at UIUC I composed the initial draft. Special thanks also goes to Mikołaj Szymański and Jan Kwapisz of the Institute of Classical Studies at the University of Warsaw for providing me with the opportunity to present a renewed version in the Seminarium Mercuriale in March 2023. Moreover, I wish to thank my colleagues of the “Plutarch lab” at the Faculty of History in the University of Warsaw for the encouragement and kind support, in particular Julia Doroszewska, Laurens van der Wiel, and Angelina Gerus, as well as Katarzyna Kuś and Bartosz Maćkiewicz of the Faculty of Philosophy. Other people to whom I owe a debt of gratitude are Kostas Arampapaslis, Christopher L. Gipson, Thomas Tsartsidis, and Nikos Anthopoulos, particularly for their invaluable help with bibliographical matters, as well as Thomas Anessi for his proofreading expertise. Finally, I would like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions and criticisms as well as the editors for accepting this piece for publication. This article was also funded by the National Science Centre, Poland, under the project “Thinking of Thinking. Conceptual Metaphors of Cognition in the Plutarchan Corpus” (UMO-2021/42/E/HS3/00259).
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Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Archilochus frs. 23, 93a–94, 98, 112–113 W.: New readings and interpretations
- The Role of Socrates in the Arginusae Affair
- Mythos and catharsis in Aristotle’s Poetics
- The Περὶ ποιητῶν Literature. A General Outline and Survey of the Extant Fragments
- χὠς ἴδον, ὣς ἐμάνην. Space, Desire and the Female Gaze in Hellenistic Poetry
- The scripted audience in Roman comedy
- “What is ‘the tradition overall’?”: Theorising Classical Reception through the Lens of Memory Studies
- List of contributors
Artikel in diesem Heft
- Titelseiten
- Archilochus frs. 23, 93a–94, 98, 112–113 W.: New readings and interpretations
- The Role of Socrates in the Arginusae Affair
- Mythos and catharsis in Aristotle’s Poetics
- The Περὶ ποιητῶν Literature. A General Outline and Survey of the Extant Fragments
- χὠς ἴδον, ὣς ἐμάνην. Space, Desire and the Female Gaze in Hellenistic Poetry
- The scripted audience in Roman comedy
- “What is ‘the tradition overall’?”: Theorising Classical Reception through the Lens of Memory Studies
- List of contributors
