Illness as an Excuse

In front of the juries of the popular courts, these former exiles tried to make people forget their prudence of that time – which could pass for cowardice – as shown by a speech pronounced by a disabled Athenian and composed by Lysias, shortly after the end of the civil war. Threatened with being deprived of the allowance that helped him to survive, the litigant makes a point of recalling his conduct under the Thirty. Never was he associated, in any way, with their acts of hubris, he claims: ‘But I went into exile at Chalcis with the people, and although I could have shared in the politeia with them, I preferred to share in the danger with all of you.’Footnote ¹² The soaring rhetoric is beautiful: The adunatos claims to be a full member of the Athenian resistance. However, his statement is enough to make one smile. First of all, the Athenian oligarchs had probably never envisaged making this destitute invalid an active member of their politeia!Footnote ¹³ In all probability, he had no choice but to remain in the city and was forced to go into exile once the civic body was redefined by the Thirty; then, as he partially admits himself, he was never an active resistance fighter: Not only did he not rally to the partisans of Thrasybulus in Phyle (who mostly came from Thebes) since he chose to settle in Euboea, far from the combat zone, but he also did not join ‘those of Piraeus,’ a few weeks later, otherwise he would surely have bragged about it in front of the jury. His ‘share in the danger’ was therefore limited to undergoing exile and settling as a metic in a city bordering Athens. He was not the only one to make this choice: ‘But I went into exile at Chalcis with the people,’ he says. This is where the truth comes out and reveals, in passing, how many exiles made this prudent choice, while waiting to see how the military situation was going to evolve.

At the other end of the social spectrum, one case allows us to show the full extent of this chorus of individuals banished by the Thirty and yet not involved in the resistance. Shortly after the restoration of democracy, between 402 and 398, a member of the outgoing Council attacked one of the new councilors drawn by lot – a certain Philon – on the occasion of the examination prior to his entry into office (dokimasia). The accuser entrusted Lysias with the task of composing the speech that, beyond the case in point, stigmatized all the citizens who had bided their time: ‘My contention is that it is not right for anybody else to offer advice in our affairs, other than those who in addition to being citizens are also enthusiastic (epithumountas) about their citizenship.’Footnote ¹⁴ To deliberate properly, it is not enough to be a citizen in name; it is also necessary to manifest the desire (epithumia) to participate in the affairs of the community. How better to express that citizenship is not only a matter of rights and status, but also of attachment, even of passion?

Far from respecting this ideal of commitment, Philo apparently acted as a simple ‘citizen by birth,’ preoccupied only by his personal comfort. To demonstrate this point, the accuser gives an account of his behavior during the civil war. ‘This man, together with the majority of the citizens, was banished by herald from the town by the Thirty. For a time, he lived in the countryside (en agrōi)’ – that is, in Attica, where he owned land. At this point, nothing can be blamed on him yet. But everything changes a few weeks later:

Like the invalid defended by Lysias, Philo thus spent most of the civil war outside Athens, taking up residence as a metic. Like him too, he seems to have used his infirmity as a pretext to justify his attitude. But his accuser rejects in advance the argument of disability by underlining that, even though physically diminished, he possessed a ‘sufficient property’Footnote ¹⁶ to support the democrats financially, ‘as many other citizens did, because they were unable to undertake this duty in person.’Footnote ¹⁷ Worse still, it seems that Philo remained comfortably sheltered until everything was over: He was not even one of the resistance fighters of the eleventh hour, who changed sides ‘when they saw that those of Phyle succeed in their efforts.’Footnote ¹⁸ The conclusion is therefore without appeal: ‘So it is not fitting that he should be treated as a friend of those who were in the town, because he did not deign to join them when they were in danger, or as a friend of those who captured Piraeus, because he was not willing to return with them from exile, even though he himself had also been made an exile.’Footnote ¹⁹

A Nonaligned Party?

Beyond its explicit target, this speech indirectly reveals what a mass phenomenon neutrality was in Athens. For, in listening carefully to the accuser, we learn that many Athenians waited a long time before taking sides. For what is Philo reproached? To have not chosen a side after the capture of Piraeus by Thrasybulus. More than half of the civil war had already gone by at this precise moment: While the Thirty had taken power in September 404 (at the latest) and democracy was restored a little more than one year later, in September or October 403, the capture of Piraeus occurred probably only in April or May.Footnote ²⁰ That is to say, for more than half of the conflict involvement in the democratic resistance was much more the exception than the rule, even among the Athenians banished by the Thirty.Footnote ²¹

Furthermore, the speech suggests that even once Piraeus was in the hands of the democrats, many exiles refused to join Thrasybulus and his men, not believing they would win. The orator alludes to this by making Philo the leader of a true ‘nonaligned party’:

The logic of the sentence is tortuous. What are in fact the ‘activities of Philo’ mentioned by the speaker? Precisely that he didn’t act in these troubled times! The speaker thus imagines, around his opponent, a chorus of citizens actively engaged in disengagement. This remark, which aims to turn Philo into a zealot for inaction and to unite a party of abstention around him, should probably not be taken too literally. But beyond the rhetorical exaggeration, the speech does suggest the existence of a mass of nonaligned citizens who, at least imaginatively, could be considered as a group in their own right within the restored democracy.

This ‘third party’ was nevertheless very heterogeneous, since it associated individuals with varied profiles – rich and poor, young and old, former exiles as well as recent outcasts. There were also Athenians with even more atypical trajectories, defying the beautiful bipartition between ‘those of the city’ and ‘those of the Piraeus’: Some Athenians belonged to one camp before rallying to the other during the conflict. In fact, the civil war cannot be seen as one block, where political choices were fixed forever. The case of Callimachus, attacked by a client of the orator Isocrates, is in this respect symptomatic. The accused is undoubtedly part of the Athenian elite: He is a member of the Three Thousand and remained in town for most of the civil war. It was only at the beginning of the summer of 403 that he finally decided to leave Athens following a conflict of interest with another member of the oligarchy. According to Isocrates, Callimachus acted as a good opportunist: Initially, he was a passionate participant in the regime of the Thirty, before joining ‘those of the Piraeus’ just as victory seemed to be within their grasp. As a proof of his duplicity, he apparently left Thrasybulus’ troops with haste: When the Spartans went to the aid of ‘those of the city,’ momentarily reversing the balance of power during the summer of 403, ‘again he escaped from there and lived in Boeotia. Therefore, he ought to be inscribed among the deserters rather than named among the exiles.’Footnote ²³

Isocrates certainly shows immense bad faith in his description.Footnote ²⁴ If we stick to the factual elements given by Isocrates’ client and free them from the cloak of rhetoric that surrounds them, Callimachus seems actually to have been a citizen with little political inclination. He is the perfect embodiment of all those individuals who, during the civil war, tried to survive in troubled times, navigating as best they could between the two camps.

Ultimately, Callimachus’ itinerary reminds us how far the Three Thousand were from unanimously supporting the Thirty. Apart from a small but active minority – the Thirty, the Ten and the Eleven, as well as the Councilors and the cavalry, often unwillingly involved in the repression of the opponents – the majority of the Athenians who had remained in the city looked on at the crimes they committed as simple spectators. This is at least what they tried to pretend in the aftermath of the civil war. When they were dragged before the popular courts, they readily emphasized their inaction – for example, consider Diognetus, who, according to his nephew, ‘under the oligarchy, did not exercise any magistracy.’Footnote ²⁵ Stigmatized among the exiles, neutrality was on the contrary a cardinal virtue for ‘those of the city.’Footnote ²⁶

Declarations of Tranquility

Still, it is necessary to specify what was at stake: The majority of the Three Thousand risked absolutely nothing in legal terms, since they were protected by the amnesty set up in 403 and the commitment ‘not to hold grudges’ (only the Thirty, the Ten and the Eleven had been excluded from the agreement, as we have seen).Footnote ²⁹ On the other hand, ‘those of the city’ could be barred from access to the magistracies in the restored democracy if they were convicted of having been magistrates under the oligarchy or of having served as cavalrymen – the armed wing of the Thirty.Footnote ³⁰

Such is precisely the accusation brought against a certain Mantitheus, about ten years after 403, when he took his preliminary examination to enter the Council. Composed by Lysias, his defense aimed to prove that he ‘did not serve in the cavalry, and was not even present in Athens, under the Thirty, nor did [he] have a share in the constitution that existed at that time.’Footnote ³¹ His line of defense rested in this case on a temporal argument: Having settled with his family by the Black Sea during the last phase of the Peloponnesian War, Mantitheus claimed to have returned to Athens only at the very end of the Thirty’s reign. ‘We were not in Athens either when the walls were being destroyed or when the constitution was being changed. We came back only five days before the men from Phyle returned from exile to Piraeus’ – that is to say, in April/May 403.Footnote ³² This choice of date owes nothing to chance: The accused had every interest in maintaining that he had returned to the city as late as possible, so as not to be associated with the crimes of the Thirty (deposed only one week after his return); but he also had to claim to have arrived before Thrasybulus had taken Piraeus. For otherwise how could he justify not rallying to the resistance fighters, even though he had reached Piraeus? One thing is clear: Neutrality was not only a matter of space – between the city and its port – but also of time – neither too early, nor too late.Footnote ³³

Lysias had already praised the neutrality of the Three Thousand in an earlier speech, composed for an anonymous citizen on the occasion of the scrutiny (dokimasia) to serve on the Council. Undoubtedly delivered shortly after 400,Footnote ³⁴ his speech was given at a time when democratic power was solidifying (i.e. shortly after the liquidation of the last oligarchic bastion in Eleusis and at the very moment Socrates was brought to justice). Accused of having conspired against democracy, the defendant starts by relativizing the cleavage between democracy and oligarchy.Footnote ³⁵ He is, nevertheless, keen to differentiate his own behavior under both regimes. During the time of the democracy, he asserts that he always behaved as an active and loyal citizen: He provided several trierarchies (costly warships), fought at sea on four occasions and even paid numerous contributions for amounts higher than what was required of him. He stepped up personally and paid from his own pocket for the survival of the regime. During the oligarchy, on the contrary, he became a citizen, who, if not passive, was at least ‘quiet’ (apragmōn): He did not exercise any magistracy and was not a member of the Council appointed at the time: ‘But if I was unwilling to hold office when I could have done so, it is right that I should now be honored by you.’Footnote ³⁶ As we might expect, he also claims not to have committed any crime during this troubled period.Footnote ³⁷

But the praise of his own inaction goes even further: ‘For it is clear that during the oligarchy, nobody suffered summary arrest (apagoge) at my hands, none of my enemies was punished, and I did not do any good to a single friend.Footnote ³⁸ After having recalled that he did not harm anyone during the oligarchy – according to an argument often usedFootnote ³⁹ – the accused even argues that he did not help any of his relatives either! How can we explain this paradoxical apology for not helping friends in need? To cut short suspicion, the defendant wanted to present himself as an inactive individual in public as well as in private, for good as well as for bad. Radical passivity is indeed the argument he puts forward to demand the jury’s indulgence:

This drastic cut-off between participation (in public affairs) and withdrawal (into the private sphere) certainly arouses suspicion: How could the litigant have avoided any reversal of fortune without being involved in any way in the oligarchy?Footnote ⁴¹ But the truth matters little in this instance. Beyond his personal case, the speech of this anonymous man gives us access to what was the line of defense probably adopted by all ‘those of the city’ after 403: It is for having been ‘quiet’ under the oligarchy that they could argue for their right to go back to being active citizens in the restored democracy.Footnote ⁴²

Autarky as a Political Fiction

One final piece of testimony makes it possible to better define the profile of these individuals who remained in the city but claimed to have sought only the ‘safeguarding of their own interests.’ It has the advantage of coming from someone directly involved in the conflict, Xenophon, who was actively engaged as a cavalryman in the oligarchic camp.Footnote ⁴³ In the Memorabilia – a work devoted to defending the memory of Socrates – he stages a dialogue dating from 404–403, during which his master gives advice to an Athenian from the city, a certain Aristarchus, who is worried about not being able to feed his whole household in these difficult times.

In many ways, Socrates’ interlocutor appears less as a real character than as the incarnation of a social type. First of all, Aristarchus is not known by any other source, and thus has no biographical depth other than that Xenophon gives himFootnote ⁴⁴; secondly, his name seems to have been chosen on purpose to point out to the reader that he was a distinguished Athenian: Aristarchos means ‘the power (archē) of the best (aristoi)’. The rest of the dialogue does not contradict this etymology: In a few sentences, Xenophon portrays him as a rich landowner with a lot of capital to his name and a member of the Three Thousand.

At the time of the dialogue, however, Aristarchus is in dire straits:

Aristarchus therefore accommodated in his house many relatives abandoned by their guardians, who had left to join the army of Thrasybulus in exile. This is a way to remind us that the stasis tore Athenian families apart and that brothers, cousins, uncles and nephews did not all support the same side; it also highlights the fact that the civil war was not only the business of adult men, but also affected in turn the women and the children placed under their protection. Likewise, it suggests, in implicit contrast with the ‘people of free condition,’ the presence of many slaves within the household, who were equally affected by the consequences of the conflict. Finally, it indicates that Aristarchus personally did not suffer the consequences of his role in the government of the Thirty: If he was able to remain in the city, it is because he was part of the Three Thousand, as was his interlocutor Socrates.

Nothing is, however, said about Aristarchus’ possible oligarchic leanings. On the contrary, Xenophon presents him as a man entirely absorbed by the management of his household, without any apparent political commitment. This is because of his dire situation: Cut off from his lands because of the occupation of Piraeus by the democrats, he cannot rent the various houses that he possesses in city – the plural reflecting his fortune – for lack of interested tenants. Even borrowing has become impossible as trust between citizens is gone. He fears that he will not be able to feed his family. In this tense atmosphere, there is a risk the oikos may quickly fall apart.

To keep this sinister fate at bay, Socrates recommends Aristarchus puts his relatives to work producing clothes to ensure the survival of the oikos. The philosopher invites his interlocutor to go beyond the prejudices of the Athenian elite, which sees in these productive tasks only a slave’s occupation: According to the philosopher, such work would set in motion a virtuous circle, producing benefit upon benefitFootnote ⁴⁶: ‘but if you exert your authority and make them work, you will love them, when you find that they are profitable to you, and they will be fond of you, when they feel that you are pleased with them. Both you and they will like to recall past kindnesses and will strengthen the feeling of gratitude (charin) that these engender.’Footnote ⁴⁷ No sooner said than done: Aristarchus manages to get the necessary funds to buy wool, and the women of the household set to work. Very quickly, cheerfulness comes to drive out the gloom.

In this festive oikos, all the positions are, however, not equal. While the women of the house work willingly, Aristarchus does not get his own hands dirty. To justify this inaction, Socrates encourages his friend to remind his female relatives of the fable of the dog protecting the flock: ‘Do not I keep you from being stolen by thieves, and carried off by wolves,’Footnote ⁴⁸ says the dog to the sheep. Like an attentive shepherd, Aristarchus thus ensures the protection of the group from external dangers. This is precisely where the fiction of a politically inactive owner, withdrawn into his household and living in isolation, brutally bursts apart. No oikos is an island: To protect his family, Aristarchus cannot stay at home, but must necessarily get involved in the life of the city: politically, to protect his relatives from outside intrusions; financially, to be able to borrow the seed capital for his new enterprise; economically, to find commercial outlets for his produce; socially, since he has to go and ask for the help of Socrates to elaborate this safeguard plan.

But for Aristarchus, as for the majority of the Athenians who remained in the city, it was important to maintain the fiction of their political disengagement: They claimed a posteriori not to have taken any part in the oligarchy, having lived in seclusion in their own houses and looked after their own interests alone. This is not a paradox in the least, considering that the Thirty’s project was to reserve to the Three Thousand the right to participate actively in the city. It was as if the only citizens who had the right to be active were in actual fact passive and voluntarily gave up their exclusive privilege.Footnote ⁴⁹

There is, however, a member of the Three Thousand whose behavior challenges this strange inversion of normality: Socrates, Aristarchus’ interlocutor, who promoted radical neutrality and militant noncommitment.

False Twins: Socrates and Andocides

First of all, let us note the synchronism of the two trials: While the philosopher was tried in the spring of 399,Footnote ⁵⁰ Andocides went to court six months before or six months later (in the fall of 400 or in the fall of 399). In both cases, the indictment had a religious background: Socrates was accused of introducing new gods into the city, and Andocides was attacked for having taken part in the Eleusinian Mysteries while a previous decree expressly forbade him to do so because of his participation, fifteen years earlier, in the desecration of that ceremony. Furthermore, Socrates and Andocides were both prosecuted by the same man, Meletus.Footnote ⁵¹ The two defendants had one final point in common: Neither of them had taken sides in the civil war – a fact for which they were bitterly criticized.

However, the two cases are not a perfect match. First of all, the two defendants did not share the same network of friends: While Andocides counted Anytus among his supporters, the latter was, on the contrary, among Socrates’ accusers. Next, the two men followed two opposite defense strategies: While the philosopher provoked the jury with challenging statements, Andocides tried by all means to convince his listeners to decide in his favor. Above all, their neutrality during the civil war had not taken the same form at all. Whereas Socrates had remained in the city and refused to obey the injunctions of the Thirty, Andocides had kept himself entirely apart from the conflict: Exiled in 415 following the mutilation of the Herms, he had remained abroad until democracy was reestablished in 403, without ever rallying either to the oligarchs in the city or to the democrats in Piraeus. This is, indeed, what he is reproached for in a speech attributed to the orator Lysias.Footnote ⁵² According to his adversary, the reconciliation agreement indeed applied only to ‘those of the city’ and to ‘those of the Piraeus,’ and not to those who were already in exile at the time of the stasis:

To benefit from amnesty, he should have chosen one side or the other, or at least he should have suffered the misfortunes caused by the civil war. Since he did not meet any of these conditions, Andocides was placed in a legal limbo that eventually would lead to his death, at least according to his accuser. Since no convention protected him, he could even be killed with impunity: ‘You should realize that by punishing Andocides and getting rid of him, you are purifying the city and freeing it from pollution, driving away the scapegoat (pharmakos), and getting rid of something accursed – because this man falls into that category.’Footnote ⁵⁴

It is in the light of these heavy charges that the defense of Andocides makes sense. Not only does the defendant want to point out his active commitment to the service of the city since his return in 403, but he also seeks to justify his absence during the civil war. His argument then takes an original turn: Andocides asks his audience to imagine the fate he would have suffered if he had been present in town at that time. In an exercise of counterfactual history, Andocides stages, in the form of a dialogue, the judicial questioning to which Charicles, one of the most fanatical of the Thirty, would have inevitably subjected him:

Through fictionalized conversation, Andocides is therefore presented as a potential victim of the oligarchy, put to death at the end of an expeditious trial: Only his providential absence from Athens allowed him to escape a programmed execution. How could he, then, be reproached for having remained in exile?

Obviously, this thought experiment did not explain, in particular, why Andocides had not joined the democrats in Piraeus to assist them in their fight.Footnote ⁵⁶ But whatever the weaknesses of the argumentation, it testifies to a fine effort, on the part of the defendant, to justify his absence: In short, he claims his neutrality was imposed, not chosen. This is the most striking difference with the trial of Socrates, during which the philosopher actively declared his noninvolvement in the civil war.

Socrates the Extravagant

Approaching Socrates’ case is always to step out upon shaky ground insofar as the philosopher has left no written record behind him: While he never stops speaking in the Platonic dialogues or the comedies of Aristophanes, it is never actually he who speaks, but always others give him voice for apologetic or critical purposes – think of the Apologies of Socrates written by Xenophon and Plato, or, symmetrically, the Accusation of Socrates (Katēgoria Sokratous) composed by Polycrates.Footnote ⁵⁷ Thenceforth, we risk getting trapped in these distorting mirror images that all share the same goal: to build up the Socratic exception, for better or for worse. If this polemical construction hinders analysis, it may be possible to control these biases by comparing Socrates’ trajectory with that of other Athenians who, like Andocides, claimed they remained neutral during the civil war. It is indeed in the light of this vast ‘neutral’ chorus that Socrates’ path appears both banal and exceptional; banal, in that, like so many others, the philosopher chose to stay in town and proclaimed a posteriori that he had not participated in the crimes of the oligarchy; exceptional, in that the philosopher also refused to get involved in the functioning of democracy, declaring he would remain radically neutral whatever the regime.

To understand the originality of the Socratic position in this matter, we should probably start by exploring the very particular relationship the philosopher had with the city of Athens. If Andocides embodies the figure of the exile, wandering from place to place without any real attachment – at least until his return in 403 – Socrates appears on the contrary as the man of a single city. Rooted in the soil of Athens from his birth to his death, the philosopher stubbornly refuses to leave his homeland, proving to be the most Athenian of all Athenians:

Before, during and after the civil war, Socrates always remained in the city, without ever seeking shelter abroad, regardless of the circumstances. Even after his death sentence, he refused to flee to Megara, Boeotia or Thessaly, as his friends urged him to doFootnote ⁵⁹: This was a puzzling choice, since most condemned men, when able to choose, preferred exile to death.

While he was viscerally attached to Athens, for better or for worse, Socrates behaved like a stranger within the city:

With this lapidary sentence, Phaedrus captures the essence of the Socratic paradox. On the one hand, the philosopher embodies the Athenian par excellence: He is, even before the outbreak of the civil war, ‘one of the city,’ in the literal sense of the expression, since he spends all his time inside the walls, rain or shine, be it the Thirty who are reigning as despots or the demagogues who lead the dance. On the other hand, Socrates acts as a stranger in his own country, as if he were not a full member of it. For we must take Phaedrus at his word: Socrates is a man ‘out of place’ (atopos) – that is, elusive, confusing and extravagant.Footnote ⁶¹ This is because the philosopher never followed the expected paths: He liked nothing more than to confound his interlocutors with his provocative thoughts, his repeated feints and his contradictory doctrines, often causing perplexity, even stupefaction.Footnote ⁶²

Elusive and unlocatable, Socrates evades understanding on all levels. Socially, he is hard to place: If the philosopher seems poor at first sight, walking barefoot and wearing a modest outfit,Footnote ⁶³ is he really? Isn’t he rich enough to fight as a hoplite, owner of his weapons?Footnote ⁶⁴ Doesn’t he consider himself a good household manager who knows how to save money, leaving him with a surplus?Footnote ⁶⁵ And above all, isn’t the philosopher reputed to have left a certain fortune to his children?Footnote ⁶⁶

The political position of Socrates is even more confusing: While his disciples readily present him as a ‘man of the people’ (dēmotikos), open to all and counting among his closest friends apparent democrats – such as Chaerephon of SphettosFootnote ⁶⁷ – his opponents stigmatize him as the educator of bloodthirsty oligarchs and as a tireless fighter against democratic irrationality. If he arouses such contrasting assessments, it is precisely because his behavior thwarts the expected divisions and, in particular, questions the traditional oppositions between commitment and tranquility, activism and neutrality.

Throughout his life, Socrates chose to stay away from active political life because his divine sign – his famous ‘daimon’ – dissuaded him from doing so: ‘This is what prevents me from getting involved in politics (ta politika prattein) and I think it was quite right to prevent me. Be sure, men of Athens, that if I had long ago attempted to take part in politics (prattein ta politika pragmata), I should have died long ago.’Footnote ⁶⁸ However, this choice does not correspond to a radical withdrawal into the private sphere, in spite of what some of his opponents may claimFootnote ⁶⁹: Far from neglecting his duties as a citizen, Socrates always scrupulously obeyed the magistrates and the laws,Footnote ⁷⁰ regularly made sacrifices on the public altars of the city,Footnote ⁷¹ and he fought with courage in the ranks of the Athenian phalanx.Footnote ⁷² Better still, he participated in the Council of Five Hundred at the end of the Peloponnesian War,Footnote ⁷³ which implies that he voluntarily presented himself for the drawing of lots that takes place prior to the exercise of such a function.

Moreover, his (relative) disengagement from ‘public affairs’ (pragmata) is the counterpart of a kind of overcommitment to the informal public space. Although he never spoke at the Assembly, Socrates roamed the city in all directions to question anyone who seemed knowledgeable, be they a citizen or a foreigner.Footnote ⁷⁴ Querying passersby in the streets, in the gymnasium or in the stoas, he favored a form of ‘sensitive conception’ of the public sphere, breaking with the institutional one.Footnote ⁷⁵ To this end, he spent time in particular public places, such as the stalls of craftsmen located in the immediate surroundings of the Agora. It is therefore, according to a tradition relayed by Diogenes Laertius, in a shoemaker’s store located just outside the great Athenian public square that he usually conversed.Footnote ⁷⁶ It is also ‘in a saddler’s workshop near the Agora’ that Socrates talked with the young and ambitious Euthydemus, after realizing that the latter ‘did not enter the Agora owing to his youth.’Footnote ⁷⁷ This is undoubtedly one of the most striking characteristics of Socratic action, and also one of the reasons for the hostility aroused by the philosopher, as witnessed in Aristophanes’ Clouds: Unlike the sophists working in the shadows of private houses,Footnote ⁷⁸ Socrates was eminently visible. Traveling through the city and its public spaces – squares, streets and porticoes – he pestered his fellow citizens with questions in the manner of a gadfly,Footnote ⁷⁹ even if it meant hurting common beliefs.

We can therefore better understand what characterizes Socrates’ specific mode of engagement in the Athenian city. While the philosopher did not habitually spend time in institutionalized public places, such as the law courts or the Pnyx where the Assemblies took place, he did frequent informal public space, in the sense meant by Jürgen Habermas – that is, a space for discussions and polemics that passed through unofficial channels and involved citizens and noncitizens, young and old, men and women.Footnote ⁸⁰ Clearly, Socrates saw this as a way to continue to practice politics by other means, through influencing the behavior of his contemporaries and, especially, the youngest among them. His opponents were not fooled by this strategy: The Thirty specifically forbade him to speak to young people under thirty,Footnote ⁸¹ while the radical democrats took him to court for having corrupted the Athenian youth.

Socrates’ political neutrality did not aim to assure him a radical form of tranquility (apragmosunē), but to give him the time he needed to intervene differently in the public space.Footnote ⁸² Besides, he himself was proud of his influence on the political life of the city, in spite of his disdain for institutionalized politics: ‘I believe that I’m one of the few Athenians – so as not to say I’m the only one, but the only one among our contemporaries – to take up true political craft and practice true politics (prattein ta politika).’Footnote ⁸³ Of what precisely does the Socratic political art consist? This was a matter of debate among the philosopher’s disciples. According to Plato, the philosopher’s mode of intervention is characterized by the relentless questioning of the beliefs and prejudices of his contemporaries – by the practice of refutation (elenchos) – in the hope of making men better and more just.Footnote ⁸⁴ Xenophon prefers to portray his master’s political teaching as more substantial: If Socrates is the only one who really practices politics, it is because he possesses the royal art (basilikē technē) – that is, the art of governing men. The philosopher is all the more efficient in this matter since he transmits his knowledge to the largest possible number of apprentices:

His disengagement from active political life was therefore not meant to renounce any form of influence on the community, but rather to help him act with much greater effectiveness, through all those he had trained.Footnote ⁸⁶

If Socrates’ puzzling attitude could arouse annoyance, even anger – bringing to mind Aristophanes’ snarl against the philosopher in the Clouds, at the beginning of the 410s – his disengagement from active political life usually protected him from the most ferocious attacks. However, the situation changed at the end of the Peloponnesian War in a context of exceptional tension: This is when the philosopher clashed head-on with the politicians of his time – be they oligarchs or democrats – in the very name of the conception of active neutrality that he defended.

Socrates the Dissenter

In the Socratic writings, the philosopher comes to embody the figure of the dissident – a man who, at mortal peril, has the courage to oppose democratic excesses as well as oligarchic drifts. In Plato’s Apology, Socrates evokes two particularly tragic moments that justify, according to him, his choice ‘not to get involved politically’Footnote ⁸⁷: first, his refusal to vote, as a member of the Council, on the condemnation of the generals after the Battle of Arginusai in 406; second, his opposition to the Thirty’s order to go and arrest a certain Leon of Salamis in 404/3.

Let’s start with the famous Arginusai affair. In 406, the Athenians won an important naval battle against the Spartans not far from the Arginusai islands, off the western coast of present-day Turkey. But their victory left a bitter taste: Because of an unexpected storm, the Athenian generals could not collect the dead or wounded sailors at the end of the combat and thus save the survivors and ensure the dead were given the appropriate funeral rites.Footnote ⁸⁸ As the opportunist he was, Theramenes then excited the anger of the Athenians against the generals, who were accused of high treason before the Assembly.Footnote ⁸⁹ As a member of the prytaneis – that is, the executive committee of the Council of Five HundredFootnote ⁹⁰ – Socrates decided to speak out (in vain) against the collective judgment of the generals, which in his eyes symbolized the transgression of all established legal norms.

Plato links this episode to another sequence that took place two years later, during the reign of the Thirty:

Mentioned by Plato as well as by Xenophon,Footnote ⁹² the episode was primarily intended to exonerate Socrates from any collusion with the Thirty, just as his detractors were accusing him of having collaborated with the oligarchy. But this evocation was probably also meant to hinder one of his accusers, Meletus, who, according to Andocides, was precisely one of the four men who had obeyed the orders of the Thirty and agreed to arrest Leon:

Linked by Plato as well as by Xenophon, these two transgressive episodes are perhaps even more closely related than they seem. It is indeed possible that Leon of Salamis – the man executed by the Thirty – had previously been part of the board of generals prosecuted in 406 and who fortuitously escaped condemnation.Footnote ⁹⁴

If this hypothesis is right, the comparison between the two episodes becomes all the more striking: In a certain way, it appears the Thirty completed the persecution initiated by the Popular Assembly! This was a clever way to dismiss radical democracy and bloody tyranny in the name of their common excesses. It was also a way to put Socrates above the fray, by presenting him as a stubborn opponent to any denial of justice, whatever its origin. In the case of Arginusai, Xenophon insists several times on the illegality of the procedure of judging the stratēgoi collectively.Footnote ⁹⁵ In the same way, he states that Socrates refused to obey the ‘orders’ of the Thirty because he considered them ‘contrary to the laws’ – that is, to the laws as the philosopher himself understood them: ‘And when the Thirty gave him an order that was illegal (para tous nomous), he refused to obey. […] And when they commanded him and certain other citizens to arrest a man [i.e. Leon of Salamis] on a capital charge, he alone refused, because the command laid on him was illegal (para tous nomous).’Footnote ⁹⁶

Reflected in this way, Socrates’ disciples ultimately contributed to transforming the philosopher into a promoter of a new form of neutrality, strictly identified with legality. It is precisely such a depoliticized conception of legality that prevails in the Crito, where the laws of the city appear unrelated to the fleeting decision of the judges who condemned the philosopher.Footnote ⁹⁷ Far from being eccentric, this representation resonates with the legislative evolutions of the end of the fifth century. A procedure for revising the Athenian laws had indeed been initiated as early as 410 and led, after many vicissitudes, to the republication of all the laws in 400/399. Laws (nomoi) were henceforth clearly distinguished from simple decrees (psēphismata): No decree could come to contradict an existing law, while the introduction of new laws (nomothesia) was made more complex and solemn. The sovereignty of the laws became then the watchword of the democracy of the fourth century.Footnote ⁹⁸ In defending a conception of legality independent of the political regime in place, Socrates was part of an ongoing historical process.

Obviously, this representation of Socrates as above the fray is largely the invention of the philosopher’s disciples, who were anxious to respond to all those who made of Socrates a sophist and a ‘friend of tyranny’ (tyrannikos), transmitting to his audience the contempt of laws and democracy.Footnote ⁹⁹ But perhaps we should go one step further: Far from being a purely defensive argument, this claim of neutrality also contributed positively to the extraordinary aura of the philosopher. For Socrates, in spite of his unattractive physique, seduced his listeners, as suggested by the vocabulary used to describe his engagement with his disciples: Sunousia evokes sexual union as much as socializing and living together.Footnote ¹⁰⁰

However, his power of attraction resided precisely in the neutrality that he displayed at all levels, including the erotic. Better still, his open disdain of aphrodisia made him all the more attractive to those whom he inspired by his words and his conduct: Displaying a sovereign indifference can indeed intensify the charisma of an individual, in the manner of the monk who owes his prestige to his rejection of the worldly desires and the pleasures of the flesh.Footnote ¹⁰¹ Political neutrality and erotic indifference thus contributed to reinforce Socrates’ seduction of his listeners. From this point of view, it is probably not an exaggeration to speak of a real chorus gravitating around the philosopher, of which he was the munificent chorēgos. These links were so intense that they aroused jealousy among the parents of his disciples, who believed themselves supplanted by the philosopher in the hearts of their children. According to Xenophon, this was one of the main reasons why he was prosecuted in the Athenian courts.Footnote ¹⁰²

Here is what separated Socrates from the other neutral individuals of the city: While neutrality aimed to bring the former oligarchs closer to the city, Socrates’ neutrality contributed to separating him from it, by intensifying feelings of love and hate toward him.