Notes to 19a7 – 19d7

Burnet chimes in on την αντωμοσιαν, “their sworn declaration”

“At the ανακρισις or preliminary instruction, both parties had to make a ‘sworn declaration.’ Socrates puts the accusation of the old accusers in strict legal form, thus doing what the prosecution should have done if it had been open and straightforward.” (161)

So this might shed some light on the interpretation of Socrates’ claim to be ignorant of forensic speech.

I was interested in two words especially from the text, περιεργαζομαι and φλυαρια.

περιεργαζομαι is defined by Liddell and Scott as “To take more pains than enough about a thing.” i.e. also a “waste of labor.” In Poetics, Aristotle uses the term to denote “overacting one’s part.” L&S do give a secondary meaning of the word to indicate “meddling, busybodying” etc. but do not include Apology 19b as such an instance. (They cite numerous others, best understood by the example of someone “interfering in the Italian business.”) So περιεργαζομαι is an interesting term—Socrates gives it a place of very special importance, it seems to me, in the repetition of the charges against him. Also, as our commentary pointed out, περιεργαζομαι is the “explanation” introduced by και to explain αδικει. Literally, we can take the word apart and see that it means something like doing around, which sense is sort of preserved in our term busybody.

I am interested in the meaning profferd by L&S, however, which is more dynamic than the busybody with which this term is most often translated. The connotation here is of excess, which does conflict with the very (stereo)typical Greek fondness for moderation. Socrates cannot leave things be in conversation, but has to continually return to the same issues.

At the end of Apology, I don’t remember where, Socrates compares himself to a “gadfly,” which will continually bite the Athenians, if memory serves.

The second term, φλυαρια, didn’t produce anything too weird. But I wanted to check because of its being situated in Socrates’ referring to Clouds. φλυαρια, “babbling, nonsense”, is part of a family of words (“confined to Attic comedy and prose” b.t.w.) including φλυαξ (“a fool”) which seem to stem from the basic verb φλυω, the verb meaning “to boil over,” and by transference, “to overflow with words,” to “talk idly, blabber, brag.”

I guess I find a couple things at least noteworthy if not remarkable. One, that the basic metaphor of “babbling” can be found in the Greek, an association of bubbling, moving liquid and “idle” speech; and secondly, I suppose, that if Socrates is made by Aristophanes to babble idly, then such an activity sheds light on περιεργαζομαι as an activity associated with wastefulness, excess, etc.

Burnet has just a few insights into our passage for this week—here are the highlights. First, a couple of glosses:

For αξιωσατε B. gives “grant me” (with the 2^nd person plural indicative having imperatival force)

For εξελεσθαι, “to remove from your minds,” in other words, B. wishes to stress the literalness of the prefix—in order to reveal its syntactic (taking of the genitive) and semantic function.

For βουλοιμην μεν ουν αν etc.: “It is here made plain that Socrates would prefer an acquittal if it could be honorable secured, and if it was God’s will.”

Smythe, 1924. Ingressive Aorist--

The aorist of verbs whose present denotes a state or a continued action, expresses the entrance into that state or the beginning of that action. This holds true of the other moods. Greek has no special form to denote entrance into a state in present time.

1925. Most of the verbs in question are denominatives, and the forms are chiefly those of the first aorist:--

αρχω rule ηρξα became ruler

βασιλευω am king εβασιλευσα became king

etc.

a. rarely with the second aorist: εσχον, took hold, took possession of, got.

b. The aorist of these verbs denotes also a simple occurrence of the action as an historical fact.

Hey, you turned out to be super-intuitive about the Aristophanes/Ameipsias co/incidence and its weirdness. Or at least its

remarkability. Here’s Burnet:

“It is remarkable that the comic poets all made fun of Socrates about the same time, and two of them in the same year, the year after he had greatly distinguished himself by his bravery in the field at Delium. Further, Ameipsias and Eupolis both allude to his poverty, though, since he served as a hoplite at Delium, he cannot have been reduced to real poverty in 424….we have no definite information as to the reasons for the attacks by the comic poets at this time, but they prove at least that Socrates was already well known at Athens.”

The first thing I want to just wonder about is this attested coincidence, that Ameipsias and Aristophanes (and also 2/3 of the agon for comedies in 423) both “make fun” of Socrates in the same year. While, as Burnet says, “we have no definite information as to the reasons…” and that “at least…Socrates was already well known” I am going to wonder about the significance of Socrates’ military service at Delium.

I mean, can we read the Socratic dialogues as to any extent at all the dialogues of a trauma—a specific trauma, watching thousands of his countrymen die in battle?

It’s hard to speculate any more, but, I don’t know, it begs the question, why 423?

The coincidences start to accumulate. I feel like I’ve been led on a little bit of a wild citation chase through the works of Plato and Aristophanes today, and, while I cannot present a clear picture, here are my findings:

In our passage of the Apology, Socrates discusses his “earlier accusers,” whom he cannot name, “except if they happen to be comedians.” A little later, he will call out Aristophanes by name, and quote The Clouds. The section he quotes is one that portrays Socrates as floating in the sky to inspect the air, which involves the τα τε μετεωρα φροντιστης trope already mentioned. It is also in our passage that Socrates indicates that many believe that those who inquire into τα τε μετεωρα φροντιστης etc. “do not believe in/worship the Gods.”

Okay.

So it so happens that there is one other place in the corpus of Plato (as far as I know, or can remember, and believe you me, I would love to be proven wrong and shown otherwise) where Plato (not Socrates) quotes Aristophanes. It’s in Symposium, 221b. It occurs in the speech of Alcibiades, who is discussing the bravery Socrates showed at Delium. In the middle of that discussion, he turns to Aristophanes and says to him, to sum up, “Let me quote you, Aristophanes, and say that he ‘strutted like a proud marsh-goose with ever a side-long glance.’” (το σον δη τουτο βρενθυομενος τ’οφλαμϖ παραβαλλειν)

The quote that Alcibiades comes up with is nearly verbatim—however, in the corresponding passage in The Clouds it is used to discuss Socrates’ demeanor very satirically. And there is a controversy about the meaning of τ’οφλαμϖ παραβαλλειν, which Burnet translates as “with a side-long glance,” and Jowett translates as “rolling one’s eyes”, the Loeb translator of The Clouds as “wearing a haughty expression” and that, of course, makes all the difference. Alcibiades turns Aristophanes’ phrase into one of commending Socrates’ face for maintaining bravery in the face of the foe.

But there’s more. In the very place in The Clouds in which this quote is derived, two lines down Socrates claims that clouds “are the only true goddesses. The rest are rubbish.” When Strepsisades asks about Zeus, Socrates says ουδ εστι ζευς, there is no Zeus.

In other words, in this part of The Clouds, the character “Socrates” who walks like a pelican with weirdly-turned eyes denies the existence of the Gods in favor of the natural world. The defendant Socrates calls out the comedian Aristophanes and says that the comedies associate interest in natural science with a disbelief in the Gods, just as they in fact do.

Where I’d like to take this: is impossible. For the jurors in Socrates’ trial could never have read Plato’s Symposium. Yet, in the middle of Alcibiades’ speech in that work, is a sort of anachronistic defense, a flip of the old accuser’s accusations, in which those very words referred to Socrates’ bravery in battle.

I apologize for the length of this post.

Diogenes Laertius on the life of Socrates

http://www.classicpersuasion.org/pw/diogenes/dlsocrates.htm

Burnet’s commentary on what follows os estin tis Socrateis down to the end of our reading, poion, is so good that I just want to transcribe it nearly verbatim, for my edification, and yours if you choose, and the world at large.

Pps. 155 – 157

B 7 σοφος ανηρ. This was not a compliment in the mouth of an Athenian of the fifth century, B.C. Cf. Euth. 3 c 6 sqq.

τα τε μετεωρα φροντιστης ‘a thinker on the things on high.’ The construction of a verbal adjective or substantive with an object accusative is common to many Indo-European languages. It is not very frequent in Greek except with εξαρνος.

τα μετεωρα (called τα ουρανια 19b5) are literally the things ‘aloft,’ ‘on high’, whether the heavenly bodies or what we now call meterological phenomena in the more restricted sense, clouds, rainbows, ‘meteors’, &c. The distinction of astronomy from metereology is connected with the later separation of the heavens from the sublunary region; in the philosophy of Ionia no such distinction was recognized. In the Clouds (228) Socrates is made to explain that he can study τα μετεωρα πραγματα better in the air than on the ground. This study was characteristic of the eastern Ionian philosophers, the Anaxagoreans, and Diogenes of Appolonia, and they are called for that reason μετεωρολογοι. In Attic writers the word and its cognates often imply a certain impatient contempt. Cf. Rep. 488e4.

φροντιστης was a regular nickname of Socrates, and Aristophanes called his school the φροντιστηριον or ‘thought factory’. The Connus of Ameipsias, which was produced the same year as the Clouds (423 b.c.e.) and also dealt with Socrates, had a chorus of φροντισται. Now the use of φροντισ for ‘thought’ and of φροντιζειν for ‘think’ is Ionic rather than Attic. In Attic φροντιζειν is ‘to care’ or ‘to heed’ (generally with a negative), and it is clear that the continual use of φροντις and φροντιζειν in the Clouds is intentional and means that the words struck Athenian ears as odd.

τα υπο γης, ‘the things under the earth.’ Just as the study of τα μετεωρα was characteristic of the eastern Ionians, so that of the interior of the earth (of which they had discovered the spherical shape) was characteristic of the Italiotes and Siceliotes, and especially of Empedocles. That Socrates was familiar with his theories can hardly be doubted, as they were attracting attention at Athens when he was a young man, and Plato has made him give a vivid description of the subterranean regions on strictly Empedoclean lines in the myth of the Phaedo (114c4).

A quick chime in from Deniston on our passage from last week. Unfortunately, he does not address the ωσπερ ουν construction—so we can follow up on that. Deniston has something to say about the και δη και in 17d.

Generally και δη και conveys the idea of climax: “And in fact…” after a sequence of aggregating terms in a list. “This transitional use is particularly common in Plato’s later work.”

But the use in 17d belongs to the class that D. terms non-normative. He says of this passage:

“Apodotic. This usage is perhaps more apparent than real. Some instances are textually uncertain, others can be explained as anacoluthon, or by the consideration that the second και goes clearly with the word that follows it.” (257)

The apodotic nature of this use then strengthens the conditionality of the sentence. As if what preceded was indeed the protasis to what follows, signaled by the και δη και. But how mysterious is Deniston here: “This usage is perhaps more apparent than real.” Why “apparent?”

Is it an anacoluthon? I’d want to really think twice and thrice and in a sedimented fashion towards any anacolutha in Plato.

All in all, this sentence seems to be more complicated than it seems, rhetorically and grammatically.

Post script: this is hilarious.

two

Some small miscellanies on our passage for tonight!

First, the use of the accusative εβδομηκοντα + γεγονως. Smythe explains the “accusative expresses extent in space and time.” The special use is discussed briefly in §1584: “Duration of life may be expressed by gegonôs: etê gegonôs hebdomêkonta seventy years old P. A. 17d . (Also by einai and the genitive, 1327.)

Secondly, two perspectives on the sentence beginning ωσπερ ουν αν:

Gildersleeves:

467. Repetition of an and ke(n)

an is not unfrequently repeated in the same clause, sometimes in order to resume a distant an, sometimes for rhetorical emphasis, especially with the negative or equivalent interrogative. ke(n) is also repeated, though rarely, and both an and ke(n) are occasionally found in the same clause.

Adams:

When the sentence merely affirms or denies that one act, if it had occurred, would be accompanied by another act, and there is no necessary relation between the two acts as cause and effect, and there is no argument drawn from the admitted unreality of the conclusion to prove the opposite of the condition, no denial of the apodosis is implied in the expression, although we may know from the context or in some other way that the action of the apodosis does not (or did not) occur. Thus in PLAT. Ap. 17 D, ei tôi onti xenos etunchanon ôn, xunegignôskete dêpou an moi ei en ekeinêi têi phônêi elegon, etc., “if I were really a foreigner, you would surely pardon me if I spoke in my own dialect, etc.”, it is not implied that now you do not pardon me. We should rather say that nothing at all is implied beyond the statement you would pardon me in that case. If the apodosis were you would not be angry with me, the impossibility of understanding but now you are angry would make this plainer.

Oh Adams, how clear thou art.

one

There was some question last week about the use of δια + the genitive in the clause that begins εαν δια των αυτων λογων ακουητε. We basically construed the meaning of the clause to be, if you hear me using those arguments (logoi) as I make my defense, i.e. the ones Socrates was accustomed to use in the agora and near the trapeze.

Here’s Smythe on δια + the genitive. He basically explains that it indicates through and out of and apart (separation by cleavage), cognate with Latin dis- and German zwi-schen. So in Homer, “the spear went clear through his shoulder.”

But 1685 d. is important for our instance:

4. “Other relations: Means, Mediation (per): dia toutou grammata pempsas…sending a letter by this man.

Sorry to be lazy about transcribing the Greek here, but I think we can now construe the sentence in Plato, if by means of those same arguments you hear me make my defense, such as those I am accustomed to use in the agora and by the trapeze…

It also struck me thinking of this sentence, what exactly is the source of the marvel or the ruckus that the jury might make? I suggested, I think, Thursday, that these types of logoi that Socrates was accustomed to make were by their very nature wondrous and ruckus-rousing. However, given what follows (in the passage we’ll be reading Thusday), perhaps it’s more appropriate to think of it in terms of what Burnet calls “forensic speech,” and that the truly marvelous and/or ruckus-rousing thing about Socrates’ defense is that he is going to eschew that forensic speech (at least he will claim to do so) in favor of something like his “natural” speech (which itself he wants the jury to conceptualize as “foreign”) which will end up sounding quite inappropriate in the courtroom setting.