Complete Works

by Plato, Cooper, John M. , Hutchinson, D. S.

  “‘Therefore, you must remember what we say and do whatever you do to the accompaniment of valor, knowing that without it all possessions [c] and all ways of life are shameful and base. For neither does wealth confer distinction on one who possesses it with cowardice (the riches of a man like that belong to another, not himself) nor do bodily beauty and strength, when they reside in a worthless and cowardly man, seem to suit him. On the contrary, they seem out of character; they show up the one who has them for what he is and reveal his cowardice. Moreover, all knowledge [247] cut off from rectitude and the rest of virtue has the look of low cunning, not wisdom.

  “‘For these reasons, make it your business from beginning to end to do your absolute utmost always in every way to surpass us and our ancestors in glory. If you do not, be sure that if we excel you in valor, our victory, as we see it, brings us shame, but if we are excelled by you, our defeat brings happiness. And the surest way to bring about our defeat and your [b] victory would be if you would prepare yourselves not to abuse and waste the good repute of your ancestors, because you are aware that for a man with self-respect nothing is more disgraceful than to make himself honored not through himself, but through his ancestors’ glory. Honors that come from ancestors are a noble and magnificent treasure for their descendants, but it is shameful and unmanly to enjoy the use of a treasure of wealth and honors and fail to hand it on to the following generation because of a lack of acquisitions and public recognition on one’s own part. And if [c] you will live as we advise you to live, you will come to us as friends to friends, when your destiny conveys you here; but if you have neglected our advice and behaved as cowards, no one will welcome you. So ends what is to be reported to our sons.

  “‘And as for those of our fathers and mothers who still live, one ought ceaselessly to encourage them to bear the sorrow, should it fall to their lot, as easily as they can, instead of joining them in lamentations. For they [d] will stand in no need of a stimulus for grief; the misfortune that has befallen them will be enough to provide that. A better course is to try to heal and soothe them, by reminding them that the gods have answered their most earnest prayers. For they prayed for their sons to live not forever, but bravely and gloriously. And that—the greatest of boons—is what they received. It is not easy for a mortal to have everything in his life turn out as he would have it.

  “‘If they bear their sorrows courageously, they will seem to be really fathers of courageous sons—and just as courageous themselves; but if they [e] succumb to grief, they will provide grounds for suspicion that either they are not our fathers or the people who praise us are mistaken. Neither of these must happen. On the contrary, they above all must be our encomiasts in action, by showing themselves to be true men, with the look of truly being the fathers of true men. Nothing too much has long been thought an excellent adage—because it is, in truth, excellent. For that man’s life is best arranged for whom all, or nearly all, the things that promote happiness [248] depend on himself. Such a man does not hang from other men and necessarily rise or fall in fortune as they fare well or badly; he is the temperate, he is the brave and wise man. He above all, when wealth and children come and when they go, will pay heed to the adage: because he relies on himself, he will be seen neither to rejoice nor to grieve too much.

  “‘That is the sort of men we expect our fathers to be, the sort we wish [b] them to be, and the sort we say they are. It is, moreover, how we now comport ourselves—neither too much vexed nor too fearful if the time of our death is upon us. And we beg our fathers and mothers to pass the rest of their lives with these same sentiments. We want them to know that they will give us no special pleasure by singing dirges and wailing over us. On the contrary, if there is among the dead any perception of the living, that is how they would most displease us—by doing themselves injuries [c] and bearing their sorrows heavily. They would please us most by bearing them lightly and with moderation. By that time our lives will have come to the conclusion that is noblest for human beings, so that it is more fitting to celebrate them than to lament them. But by caring for our wives and children and nourishing them, and by turning their minds to the concerns of the living, they would most readily forget their troubles and live more nobly, more uprightly, and more in harmony with our wishes. [d]

  “‘That is enough to report from us to our parents. As for the city—we would exhort her to care for our parents and children, educating the latter decently and cherishing the former in their old age as they deserve, if we did not, in fact, know that she will care for them well enough with no exhortation from us.’

  “Children and parents, the dead commanded me to report those words, [e] and I report them with all my heart. And on my own part, in these men’s name I beg their sons to imitate them, and I beg their fathers to be confident about themselves, knowing that we will, as individuals and as a community, cherish you in your old age and care for you, anywhere any one of us comes upon any one of you. No doubt you yourselves are aware of the concern shown by the city: she has made laws relating to the families of men who have died in war, and she takes care of their children and parents. More than in the case of other citizens, it is the official duty of [249] the highest magistracy to see to it that their fathers and mothers are protected from injustice. The city herself assists in bringing up their children, eager to keep their orphaned condition as hidden from them as it can be. She assumes the role of father to them while they are still children. When they attain manhood, she decks each of them out in hoplite’s armor and sends him out on his life’s business, showing him and reminding him of his father’s pursuits, by giving him the tools of his father’s valor and, at the same time, allowing him, for the sake of the omen, to go for the [b] first time to his ancestral hearth, there to rule in might, arrayed in arms.18

  “The dead themselves she never fails to honor: every year she herself celebrates for all publicly the rites that are celebrated for each in private, and in addition she holds contests in athletic prowess and horsemanship and in music and poetry of every kind. Quite simply, for the dead she [249c] stands as son and heir, for their sons as a father, for their parents as a guardian; she takes complete and perpetual responsibility for all of them.

  “With this in mind, you ought to bear your sorrow more patiently; in that way you would best please both the dead and the living and would most easily heal and be healed. And now that you and all the others have, according to the custom, publicly lamented the dead, take your departure.”

  [d] There you have it, Menexenus—the speech of Aspasia of Miletus.

  MENEXENUS: By Zeus, Socrates, your Aspasia is indeed lucky if, woman though she be, she can compose speeches like that one.

  SOCRATES: If you doubt it, come to class with me and hear her speak.

  MENEXENUS: I have often talked with Aspasia, and I know what she is like, Socrates.

  SOCRATES: Well then, don’t you admire her and aren’t you grateful to her for her speech now?

  MENEXENUS: Yes, Socrates, I’m very grateful for that speech—to her or [e] whoever it was who recited it to you. Furthermore, I’m grateful to him who recited it to me, for that and many other favors besides.

  SOCRATES: Very well, but make sure you don’t give me away, so that I may report to you many fine, statesmanlike speeches from her in the future.

  MENEXENUS: Don’t worry. I won’t. Just be sure to report them.

  SOCRATES: Yes, I’ll be sure to.

  1. Lamprus was a respected musician, and Thucydides called Antiphon the foremost orator in Athens. Socrates’ broad ironical point is that no one could have more accomplished teachers than these two.

  2. The remains of the dead have been exposed to view, mourned, and carried in procession to the tomb, where the speech is being delivered.

  3. In myth Athena and Posidon vied for sovereignty of Athens. On the grounds that Athena’s gift of the olive tree was more valuable than the salt-water spring Posidon had made gush forth on the Acropolis, the twelve god
s appointed by Zeus to arbitrate the dispute awarded the sovereignty to her.

  4. After the monarchy was abolished at Athens, one of the nine principal administrative officials, called archons, was the “king archon.” He was concerned for the most part with religious functions.

  5. Eumolpus was defeated at Eleusis by the legendary Athenian king Erechtheus. According to legend, the Amazons, when they invaded Athens, were defeated by Theseus, who also led the Athenians in forcing Thebes, founded by Cadmus, to return the Argive dead after the war of the Seven Against Thebes. The Sons of Heracles were supposed to have been pursued by their father’s enemy Eurystheus, who ruled cities in the part of the Peloponnese that is often referred to, somewhat loosely, as Argos. When they took refuge in Athens, he marched against them and was defeated and killed by the Athenians.

  6. Reading en mnēsteia(i) in c4.

  7. I.e., as usual in classical Greek, the Persians. Similarly, “king” below refers to the king of Persia.

  8. I.e., win a battle; trophies, usually consisting of a suit of enemy armor on a stake, were erected at battle sites by the army still in possession of the field after the action.

  9. During the second Persian invasion of the Greek mainland, by Darius’ son Xerxes in 480–479.

  10. The reference is to the first part (432–421) of the Peloponnesian War, called the Archidamian War after a Spartan, i.e., Lacedaemonian, king.

  11. This “third war” (counting the Persian War as the first) is the second and final part of the Peloponnesian War, which broke out when the Athenians sent an expedition to Sicily in 415 and which lasted until 404.

  12. The battle of Cyzicus, in 410.

  13. Failure to pick up the dead and rescue the wounded from the sea after the battle of Arginusae, in 406, caused widespread resentment against the generals in charge.

  14. This “civil war” was fought in 403 to restore the Athenian democracy by ousting the oligarchy of the “Thirty Tyrants,” who had seized power with Spartan help at the end of the Peloponnesian War. The conclusion of the civil war, referred to just below, came about through the defeat of the Thirty at Eleusis, where they had retreated.

  15. In response to Xerxes’ invasion, the Athenians abandoned their city walls to destruction and took to the “wooden walls” of their ships, which were instrumental in defeating the Persians at Salamis. Now Sparta had exacted the destruction of both walls and ships in the peace terms that ended the Peloponnesian War.

  16. This probably refers to the terms under which the Spartans brought Persia into the Peloponnesian War against Athens in 412.

  17. Many Greek cities had adventurers from abroad mixed up in their foundation legends, such as Pelops from Asia Minor at Mycenae, Cadmus from Phoenicia at Thebes, and Aegyptus and Danaus from Egypt and Libya at Argos.

  18. During the festival called the Great Dionysia, before the competition in tragedy which formed part of it, grown sons of men who had been killed in war were presented to the people in the theater, dressed in hoplite armor, and put in charge of their household and property.

  CLITOPHON

  Translated by Francisco J. Gonzalez.

  Socrates is in Clitophon’s bad books because he has been unable to satisfy Clitophon’s thirst for virtue. It was Socrates himself, with his rousing exhortations to virtue, who stimulated this desire in Clitophon and caused him to enter the Socratic milieu in search of the knowledge that he needed next: a philosophical understanding of virtue itself, especially justice. With Socrates and Socrates’ friends, his search always ended in dead ends, and he concluded that the Socratic project had to be pursued at a deeper level, in open discussions with Thrasymachus and anybody else who might help.

  It comes as quite a surprise to see a Platonic dialogue in which Socrates is the target of attack and fails to have the last word, especially considering that the criticisms he leaves unanswered are delivered by an associate of Thrasymachus, the radical thinker whose views are rejected in Plato’s Republic. Even considering the rich variety of the Platonic corpus, Clitophon is an oddity, indeed an enigma.

  One of the most interesting features of the dialogue is the Socratic exhortation to virtue (407b–408c), a version of the speeches with which Socrates repeatedly harangued his fellow Athenians. The ideas in this exhortation have parallels in Plato’s Apology and Euthydemus, the Alcibiades, Aeschines’ Alcibiades (fragments), Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates (IV.ii), and other works, including no doubt the lost Exhortation dialogues of Aristippus of Cyrene and Antisthenes of Athens. The rhetoric of Socrates’ exhortation in Clitophon is paralleled in Xenophon’s Memoirs of Socrates (I.v). Although his enthusiasm for this style of exhortation is rather sarcastically expressed, Clitophon focuses his criticism on what comes next, or rather, on what fails to come next: a properly philosophical understanding of the nature of justice and what it accomplishes. The remarkable thing is that Clitophon argues in the same dialectical way that Socrates does in Plato’s Socratic dialogues; Socrates is hoist with his own petard, and Clitophon is the Socratic hero of the piece.

  But why is Socrates the villain? Does the author align himself with the rhetorical tradition in rejecting the entire Socratic legacy as a dead end? Or is he a spokesman for Plato and his dialectical attempt to establish the Socratic way of thinking on deeper and better foundations than those built upon by competing followers of Socrates? Might the author even be Plato himself? All these questions remain open.

  Xenophon seems to have read Clitophon; if so, his reply in Socrates’ defense (Memoirs of Socrates I.iv.1) would date it to the second quarter of the fourth century B.C.—during Plato’s lifetime. The dialogue is a carefully contrived pamphlet, not a fragment or a draft.

  D.S.H.

  [406] SOCRATES: We have recently been informed that Clitophon the son of Aristonymos, in discussion with Lysias, has been criticizing the conversations and speeches of Socrates, while greatly praising the instruction of Thrasymachus.1

  CLITOPHON: Whoever told you that, Socrates, misrepresented what I said to Lysias about you. Though it’s true that I didn’t praise you for some things, I did praise you for others. Since you’re obviously scolding me right now, though you’re pretending you don’t care, I’d be very glad to tell you myself what I said—especially since we happen to find ourselves alone—so you won’t so readily suppose that I have anything against you. In fact, you probably didn’t hear the truth, which is why I think you’re being needlessly hard on me. So2 if you’d let me speak freely, I’d gladly do so—I want to tell you what I said.

  [407] SOCRATES: By all means; it would be shameful for me not to submit to you when your intention is to help me; for clearly, once I know my good and bad points, I will make it my practice to pursue and develop the former while ridding myself of the latter to the extent that I am able.

  CLITOPHON: Listen, then. Socrates, when I was associating with you I was often struck with amazement by what you said. You appeared to me to rise above all other men with your magnificent speeches when you reproached mankind and, like a god suspended above the tragic stage, chanted3 the following refrain:

  [b] O mortals, whither are you borne? Do you not realize that you are doing none of the things you should?!4 You men spare no pains in procuring wealth for yourselves, but you neither see to it5 that your sons, to whom you are leaving this wealth, should know how to use it justly, nor do you find them teachers of justice (if justice can be taught), nor anybody to exercise and train them adequately (if it is acquired by exercise and training)—nor indeed have you started by undergoing such treatment yourselves!

  But when you see that you and your children have had a thorough [c] education in grammar, gymnastics and the arts—which you consider to be a complete education in virtue—and that you still have turned out to be no good at using wealth, how can you fail to despise our present education, and seek those who will rescue you from this lack of culture?! Yet it is this dissonance, this carelessness, not dancing the wrong measures to the lyre, that m
akes measure and harmony disappear between brother and brother, [d] city and city, as they oppose each other, clash and fight, inflicting and suffering the utmost horrors of war.

  You say that men are unjust because they want to be, not because they are ignorant or uneducated. But then you have the effrontery to say, on the other hand, that injustice is shameful and hateful to the gods. Well, then, how could anyone willingly choose such an evil?! “Perhaps he is defeated by pleasure,” you say. But isn’t this defeat involuntary if conquering is voluntary? Thus every way you look at it, the argument shows that injustice is involuntary, and that every man privately and every city publicly [e] must devote to this matter greater care than is presently the norm.

  When, Socrates, I hear you say such things time and time again, I’m very impressed and I praise you to the skies; and also when you go on to the next point, that those who discipline the body while neglecting the soul are doing something else of the same sort, neglecting that which should rule while busying themselves with that which should be ruled; and also when you say that it’s better to leave unused what you don’t know how to use: if someone doesn’t know how to use his eyes or his ears or his whole body, it would be better for him not to use it all, whether for seeing or hearing or anything else, rather than use it in some haphazard [408] way. In fact, the same applies to skills; for someone who doesn’t know how to use his own lyre will hardly be able to use his neighbor’s lyre, nor will someone who doesn’t know how to use the lyre of others be capable of using his own lyre, nor any other instrument or possession whatsoever. Your speech delivers a wonderful coup de grace when it concludes that someone who doesn’t know how to use his soul is better off putting his soul to rest and not living at all rather than leading a life in which his actions are based on nothing but personal whim. If for some reason he must live, it would be better for such a man to live as a slave than to be [b] free, handing over the rudder of his mind, like that of a ship, to somebody else who knows that skill of steering men which you, Socrates, often call politics, the very same skill, you say, as the judicial skill and justice.