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.