Bettany Hughes on Socrates
The biographer and author of a new book discusses what new there is to learn about the ancient Greek philosopher
- By Megan Gambino
- Smithsonian magazine, April 2011, Subscribe
Sure, Socrates was one of the founders of Western philosophy, but what was he really like? The 42-year-old British historian Bettany Hughes, whose previous biography dealt with Helen of Troy, brings him to life 25 centuries after his death in The Hemlock Cup: Socrates, Athens and the Search for the Good Life. She spoke with the magazine’s Megan Gambino.
Why Socrates?
We think the way we do partly because Socrates thought the way he did. His basic idea—that the unexamined life is not worth living—is what it means to live in the modern world, to develop ideas and ask questions. Yet people imagine Socrates as this rather lofty graybeard dressed in a toga. He lived a very vigorous, quite gritty life.
How did you go about piecing together his life story?
I cannot write history unless I travel to the places where it happened. I spent a lot of time walking around the Eastern Mediterranean, going to all the shrines that Socrates would have worshiped at, going to all the battlefields that he fought on. Socrates was a great walker. They say he was a fiend for exercise. He was absolutely not shut away in some ivory tower somewhere.
What’s the most important thing to know about him?
He really challenged the status quo, and he was very brave in doing that. He was an activist in some ways, a philosophical activist.
What surprised you the most?
How much of his life he spent as a soldier. He would have seen appalling scenes in battle, and yet right until the end of his life he was still searching for the good. That was probably the most poignant thing for me.
How can we benefit from knowing more about him?
The value of wisdom. Socrates is fantastic at saying, “Look, I’m not saying that material comfort isn’t important. I’m not saying it’s not important to make beautiful statues and to have fine battleships and city walls. But none of this matters unless the people inside those city walls are happy.”
How did you end up feeling about him?
He could be infuriating. I’m sure if you went to a dinner party with him, he’d sit there and pick holes in your arguments. He would nail you. I’m sure he was quite an awkward person, but he was also electrifying. He was famously ugly. He didn’t fit in with what a beautiful, heroic Greek should be. He was the opposite of those things and yet everybody around him adored him.
What was the strangest thing you did to try to conjure up his world?
I ground up hemlock in a pestle and mortar. In Socrates’ day this was a new form of poison and capital punishment. I did that at home in my kitchen.
Is there a question you couldn’t get to the bottom of?
The key question is whether he was happy to die the way he did. Socrates was tried in a religious court. He was condemned for disregarding Athens’ gods. If you look at the way he speaks at his trial, according to Plato, there seems to be a moment when he realizes this isn’t just a game. I would love to know if he did die with equanimity, which is the picture we are given of him, or whether he thought he had a few more years of philosophizing in him and wished there hadn’t been that judgment for death.
Subscribe now for more of Smithsonian's coverage on history, science and nature.
Comments (6)
Socrates teacher , is in all of us , it was the spirit of truth , all we have to do is just listen .
Posted by demetrios corinthios on May 10,2011 | 02:28 AM
A slight amendment or condition to add to my invitation to dinner.... Please leave the hemlock at home! Btw, one feels one must inquire...after preparing it...what did Ms Hughes DO with it? I imagine her holding the cup, like a brandy snifter, and sampling the aroma Socrates would have inhaled....Hmmmm, must try that...where DID I put that mortar and pestle...?
Posted by Retro Richard Graham on April 21,2011 | 06:15 PM
If Brittany Hughes is free for dinner I'd love to have a discussion of the master in person. What a handsome, communicative woman. The gods spoken of being creations of the imaginations of his fellow Greeks was not lost on Socrates, I suspect his "religion" was the same one we would all do well to seek out in this day, a vastly more gritty time and much closer to the promised "end" than people are willing to admit. I shall seek out Ms Hughes book!
Posted by Retro Richard Graham on April 21,2011 | 06:11 PM
I disagree with Mr. Green. The apology lists three major charges: corrupting the youth, atheism, and going about with hishead in the clouds (asking questions instead of being "productive"). If true, all of these amounted to a general charge of impiety, or thinking he was a self-made man. The Greeks rightly judged that a person who didn't recognize what he owed to his god and his community, and who taught kids to be impious should not be among them. Of course, they condemned him unjustly. But Athens had just been humiliated and crushed by enemies, and the Athenians needed a scapegoat.
I also disagree with Ms. Hughes on one point at least: our world has not learned from Socarates. It still lives by greed, sophistry and sleek slogans.
Posted by Donald Novak on April 14,2011 | 04:13 PM
No, sorry. Bettany Hughes is absolutely right: Socrates was charged by Meletus and Anytus with impiety and with corrupting the youth.
Posted by Tom Powell on April 14,2011 | 02:20 PM
Ms. Hughes is absolutely wrong about why Socrates was condemned. The charge was corrupting the youth, not disregarding Athen's gods.
Posted by Frank Green on March 28,2011 | 02:39 PM