50 Fun Facts About Socrates

Which comedy has time-travelling teenagers collect Socrates for a California high-school history presentation?

Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure. The two slackers bundle him into their phone-booth time machine along with Napoleon and Billy the Kid, and insist on calling him 'So-crates'.

What did Socrates himself leave behind for readers?

No writings. In Plato's Phaedrus he even distrusts the written word, which he says is like a painting that stays silent when you ask it a question.

What was the trade of Socrates's father Sophroniscus?

Stoneworker. An ancient tradition had Socrates learn the craft too: draped figures of the Graces at the entrance to the Acropolis were said to be his work.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates tells the jury that which kind of life is not worth living?

The unexamined life. He said it after the guilty verdict, to explain why he could not simply go into exile and keep quiet: giving up his questioning would be no life at all.

Socrates's pupil Xenophon helped lead which army of Greek mercenaries home from Persia?

The Ten Thousand. Before joining them Xenophon asked Socrates's advice and was sent to consult an oracle, but asked only which gods to sacrifice to, and Socrates scolded him for it.

What is the scholarly difficulty of reconstructing the real Socrates from contradictory sources called?

The Socratic problem. Aristophanes drew a comic crank, Xenophon a sober moralist and Plato a sly ironist, and some scholars think the real man can no longer be recovered.

Which Aristophanes comedy features a caricature of Socrates as an absurd atheist?

The Clouds shows Socrates dangling in a basket to study the sky. At his trial, Plato has him blame the comedy for the old prejudice against him.

In Aristophanes's play, what is the name of the school Socrates runs?

The Thinkery takes in Strepsiades, an old farmer who wants to learn to argue his way out of his debts. He ends the play by setting the place on fire.

How did Aristophanes's comedy about Socrates fare at the City Dionysia of 423 BC?

It came last of three, behind Cratinus's Pytine and Ameipsias's Connus, another comedy that mocked Socrates. Aristophanes rewrote it, and only the revision survives.

What delayed Socrates's execution for about a month?

A sacred voyage: the city's ship was away at Delos on its yearly mission to Apollo, and no executions were allowed until it came back. Socrates spent the wait in prison talking with friends.

Alongside corrupting the youth, what was the other charge against Socrates?

Impiety, or asebeia. In court Socrates argued the charge contradicted itself: his accuser called him a complete atheist, yet also blamed him for believing in new divine beings.

How long did the trial of Socrates last?

A day. The law gave even a capital case a single day in court, and Plato has Socrates complain that with more time he could have won the jury round.

What poison did Socrates drink to carry out his sentence?

Hemlock. In Plato's account he drank it calmly, walked about until his legs grew heavy, then lay down while the numbness crept upward from his feet.

In Plato's account, Socrates's last words asked Crito to pay what debt to the god Asclepius?

A rooster. The sick offered one to Asclepius, god of medicine, so scholars still argue over whether Socrates meant that death was curing him of life.

Which Plato dialogue shows Socrates discussing the immortality of the soul in the hours before his death?

Phaedo. Its narrator, Phaedo of Elis, lists the friends who were at the deathbed and adds that Plato himself was missing, apparently ill.

In the dialogue Crito, what does Socrates personify to argue he must not flee prison?

The Laws of Athens. They remind him that he chose to live under them for seventy years when he could have left, and so agreed to obey even a verdict that goes against him.

Socrates's friend Chaerephon asked which oracle whether anyone was wiser than Socrates?

Delphi. Socrates took the reply as a riddle and spent years cross-examining politicians, poets and craftsmen to test it, which made him many enemies.

How did the oracle answer when Chaerephon asked whether anyone was wiser than Socrates?

No man was wiser, came the reply. Socrates decided it could only mean that he, unlike those with a name for wisdom, knew how little he knew.

In Plato's Apology, Socrates likens himself to which creature, sent to rouse a sluggish city?

A gadfly. He pictured the city as a great, noble horse made slow by its own size, and warned the jury they would not easily find another to keep stinging it awake.

What is the Greek term for the Socratic method of question-and-answer refutation?

Elenchus. Socrates asks an expert to define a virtue, then draws out answers that contradict the definition, until the expert turns out not to know what he claimed to know.

In the Theaetetus, Socrates compares his method to which profession?

Midwifery, his mother's trade. He claimed to have no wisdom of his own to deliver, only a knack for helping other people bring their ideas to birth.

What is the Greek name for the inner voice that Socrates said warned him off mistakes?

The daimonion only ever held him back and never urged him on. When it stayed silent all through his trial, he took that as a sign death was nothing to fear.

What was the name of Socrates's wife, mother of his son Lamprocles?

Xanthippe. Later writers made her a byword for a scolding wife, yet Plato's only scene with her shows her at the prison with their child, grieving on his last day.

In Plato's Symposium, which flamboyant general says Socrates saved his life in battle?

Alcibiades. He says Socrates refused to leave him when he was wounded and got him out, armour and all, then pressed the generals to give the prize for valour to Alcibiades instead.

In a famous anecdote, what did Socrates's wife pour over his head?

A jug of water, in the oldest telling; later versions made it a chamber pot. Socrates is said to have shrugged that after so much thunder, rain was only to be expected.

Which of Chaucer's Canterbury pilgrims retells the story of Socrates being doused?

The Wife of Bath. It is one of the tales of wicked wives her fifth husband loved to read aloud, until she tore a leaf from his book and he struck her deaf in one ear.

Which poet initiated the accusations against Socrates and demanded the death penalty?

Meletus. Plato's Socrates calls him young and unknown, and says that without his two fellow accusers he would not have won even a fifth of the jury's votes.

In Plato's Apology, what surprised Socrates about the guilty verdict?

It was so close: he had expected to lose heavily, and remarked that if only thirty jurors had voted the other way he would have walked free.

How did the jury's vote for death compare with its earlier vote to convict Socrates?

It drew more votes. Diogenes Laertius says the death sentence gained eighty fresh votes, after Socrates answered the guilty verdict with a second, defiant speech.

In Plato's Apology, what does the convicted Socrates cheekily propose as his 'punishment'?

Free meals at public expense, in the Prytaneum, an honour given to Olympic victors. He argued that a champion only makes the city feel happy, while he did it real good.

In Plato's Republic, Socrates pictures chained prisoners who mistake shadows on a wall for reality in the allegory of what?

The cave. One prisoner is freed and sees the sun, and Socrates says that if he went back down to enlighten the rest, they would laugh at his ruined eyes and kill him if they could.

Socrates fought in three campaigns of the Peloponnesian War as what kind of soldier?

A hoplite, a heavy-armed foot soldier. In the rout at Delium he is described retreating so calmly, eyeing friend and foe alike, that no pursuer cared to take him on.

Whom did the Thirty Tyrants order Socrates and four others to arrest for execution?

Leon of Salamis. The other four fetched him to his death while Socrates simply went home, and he later said that only the regime's swift fall had saved his own life.

In Plato's Symposium, the snub-nosed, bulging-eyed Socrates is likened to which mythical creature?

A satyr. The speaker means the ugly Silenus figures sold in sculptors' shops, which opened up to show images of gods inside, as Socrates's plain talk hid its treasures.

On a bitter winter campaign, how did Socrates amaze his fellow soldiers by crossing the ice?

Barefoot, and in his ordinary cloak. Plato's Symposium says the other soldiers, their feet bundled in felt and fleeces, glared at him because they thought he was showing them up.

Who labelled the new genre 'Socratic dialogues' (Sokratikoi logoi) in his treatise on poetry?

Aristotle. In the Poetics he groups these dialogues with mime as a kind of imitation, one reason some scholars treat them as fiction rather than records of what was said.

Which philosopher's 1841 dissertation was titled On the Concept of Irony with Continual Reference to Socrates?

Søren Kierkegaard. Socrates stayed his hero for life: he distrusted the grand philosophical systems of his own day and modelled his thinking on the ancient questioner instead.

Which follower of Socrates was later regarded as the founder of Cynic philosophy?

Antisthenes. He taught that virtue was all that mattered and scorned possessions, a line that Diogenes and the later Cynics pushed to extremes.

Which pupil of Socrates founded the hedonistic Cyrenaic school?

Aristippus. Back in his home city of Cyrene he taught that pleasure was the goal of life and lived in luxury, about as far from his frugal teacher as a pupil could go.

Who painted The Death of Socrates in 1787?

Jacques-Louis David. He seated an aged Plato at the foot of the bed, though Plato, by his own account, was not there that day: a nod to the writer who preserved the scene.

Where has The Death of Socrates hung since 1931?

Metropolitan Museum of Art, which bought it in 1931. The painter had asked a classical scholar how to stage the scene accurately, down to the furniture and the clothing.

In Plato's Symposium, Socrates recounts what he learned about love from which wise woman?

Diotima of Mantinea. She teaches him that love climbs step by step from one beautiful body to beauty itself, and nobody knows whether she was a real woman or Plato's invention.

Socrates held that 'no one errs willingly', so wrongdoing always comes down to what?

Ignorance. In Plato's Protagoras he argues that anyone who truly knew what was good would do it, so he denied that a person can know better and still give in to temptation.

Which Xenophon work defends Socrates from the charges by collecting stories into a new apology?

Memorabilia. Xenophon was away soldiering in Asia during the trial, and his defence may really be answering a pamphlet attacking Socrates that a sophist published years later.

Xenophon's Socrates places more emphasis than Plato's on which virtue?

Enkrateia (self-control). Xenophon's Socrates calls it the very foundation of virtue, since nobody ruled by his appetites can learn anything good or put it into practice.

In 406 BC Socrates alone on the presiding committee opposed putting which group on trial together?

Six victorious generals. They had won the sea battle of Arginusae but failed to rescue their shipwrecked crews, and were tried as a group, against the law, then executed.

A disputed ancient story gives Socrates a second wife, Myrto, descended from which statesman nicknamed 'the Just'?

Aristides. Later writers traced the tale to a lost treatise, but Plato and Xenophon never mention Myrto, and she is variously called his daughter, granddaughter or great-granddaughter.

How does Plato's Symposium say Socrates ended the all-night drinking party?

Awake and clear-headed. Having talked the last two guests to sleep at dawn, he got up, went off to wash, and spent the day as usual before going home that evening.

Which philosopher wrote that it is 'better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied'?

John Stuart Mill, in Utilitarianism. He was arguing that pleasures differ in quality: the fool and the pig are content, he said, only because they know just their own side of the question.

Which Renaissance essayist returned to Socrates again and again, admiring his endless questioning?

Michel de Montaigne. He had a medal struck with his own sceptical motto, 'What do I know?', a doubt very much in the spirit of his ancient hero.