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Socrates in Combat: Trauma and Resilience in Plato’s Political Theory

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Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks

Part of the book series: The New Antiquity ((NANT))

Abstract

Socrates was a combat soldier during the Peloponnesian War. This aspect of his biography is rarely placed at the center of an account of the enduring interest of the life of this celebrated philosopher. When it is the effect is striking. This is especially clear in the interpretation of Socrates by the Italian master of neoclassical sculpture Antonio Canova. In a series of four large bas-reliefs completed between 1789 and 1796 and now in the collection of the Museo Canoviano in Passagno, Canova addresses Socrates’ trial and death.1 In the first panel he depicts Socrates raising his arm and addressing the jurors while Meletus and Anytus, the historical accusers, hover in the background. Standing by Socrates is the boundary-crossing god Hermes ready to see him through dangerous circumstances and to the underworld (visually modeled on Alcibiades wearing a helmet2). The next three panels continue the story and bring out its psychological complexity. Canova shows us Socrates sending his family away and draws attention to his parting from his eldest child. The scene suggests Socrates’ capacity for tenderness. It also presents Socrates’ seated philosophical friends composed and unshaken. Following that Canova displays Socrates’ calm and constancy under extreme stress. In this scene Socrates holds the cup of hemlock nearly to his lips with his left hand and, recalling the composition of the first relief, gestures upward with his right arm as he speaks to his friends.

I wish to thank Peter Meineck, David Konstan, Edith Hall, and Melissa Lane for encouraging me to take up this project. This work has also benefited from the comments of colleagues and students at New York University, University of Michigan, University of Wisconsin, University of Oxford, University of Sydney, University of South Carolina, and the Research Workshop in Classical Receptions at the Alice B. Kaplan Institute for the Humanities at Northwestern University.

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Authors
  1. S. Sara Monoson
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Peter Meineck David Konstan

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© 2014 Peter Meineck and David Konstan

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Monoson, S.S. (2014). Socrates in Combat: Trauma and Resilience in Plato’s Political Theory. In: Meineck, P., Konstan, D. (eds) Combat Trauma and the Ancient Greeks. The New Antiquity. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137398864_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137398864_7

  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York

  • Print ISBN: 978-1-349-48560-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-1-137-39886-4

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