Chapter 23 pdf

Notes for Dialogue 23 - “The Living Word” Part II.
[[I highlight here the splendid minutes of Franklin Zhao for the 2008 version of
Dialogue 23, stored in the archives of the Heroes site.]]
[[I need to say at the beginning that Socrates, even though he is being set up to become
a cult hero in Plato’s Apology and Phaedo, resists this role. That is why he is the first true
Anti-Hero in this course. As I said at the very beginning of the course, the true ‘hero’ of
this course is the word, the logos, as brought to life in dialogue, Socratic dialogue.]]
The key word for this dialogue is sōzein (verb) ‘save; be a sōtēr (for someone)’; sōtēr
‘savior’ (either ‘bringing to safety’ or, mystically, ‘bringing back to life’); sōtēria ‘safety,
salvation’. I am not borrowing this concept of “savior” and “salvation” from Christian
discourse. Christian discourse inherited the words sōtēr ‘savior’ and sōzein (verb) ‘save;
be a sōtēr (for someone)’ from pre-Christian phases of the Greek language.
A1. Let us examine this word in the context of the following passage, which is the
beginning of Plato’s Phaedo:
A) Plato’s Phaedo (57a-58c):
Echecrates. [57a] Were you yourself, Phaedo, in the prison with Socrates on the day
when he drank the poison [pharmakon]?
Phaedo. Yes, Echecrates, I was.
Ech. I wish that you would tell me about his death. What did he say in his last hours?
We were informed that he died by taking poison [pharmakon], but no one knew
anything more; for no Phliasian ever goes to Athens now, [57b] and a long time has
elapsed since any Athenian found his way to Phlius, and therefore we had no clear
account.
Phaed. [58a] Did you not hear of the proceedings at the trial?
Ech. Yes; someone told us about the trial, and we could not understand why, having
been condemned, he was put to death, as appeared, not at the time, but long
afterwards. What was the reason of this?
Phaed. An accident [tukhē], Echecrates. The reason was that the stern of the ship which
the Athenians send to Delos happened to have been garlanded [stephein] on the day
before he was tried.
Ech. What is this ship?
Phaed. This is the ship in which, as the Athenians say, Theseus went to Crete when he
took with him the fourteen youths, [58b] and was the savior [sōzein] of them and of
himself. And they were said to have vowed to Apollo at the time, that if they were saved
[sōzein] they would make an annual pilgrimage [theōria] to Delos. Now this custom still
continues, and the whole period of the pilgrimage [theōria] to and from Delos, [58c]
beginning when the priest of Apollo garlands [stephein] the stern of the ship, is the
season of the theōria, during which the city is not allowed to be polluted by public
executions; and often, when the vessel is detained by adverse winds, there may be a
very considerable delay. As I was saying, the ship was garlanded [stephein] on the day

efore the trial, and this was the reason why Socrates lay in prison and was not put to
death until long after he was condemned.
I return to a question I posed the last time. Where was Plato when Socrates died? Plato
was “weak” and couldn’t attend. To repeat, the single naming of Plato in the Phaedo is
the only place, besides the single naming of Plato in the Apology, where Plato is
mentioned at all in Plato’s own works. This authorial self-effacement is relevant to the
objectives of Socratic dialogue.
Earlier, we saw that Socrates composes a Hymn to Apollo, without the medium of writing
(the word for ‘compose’ in this context is poieîn ‘make’ - not graphein ‘write’). The word
that we translate as ‘hymn’ is prooimion. This word conveys the idea that a perfect
beginning of a song is metonymically a perfect song in its entirety, even though that
song is only potential in the prooimion.
We now see, in the passage we are considering, that Theseus is the sōtēr of the city of
Athens. The hero as sōtēr or ‘savior’ has been a central theme in this course. The
occasion of ‘salvation’ here is the archetypal theōria of Theseus to Delos, where he
celebrates his ‘salvation’ in Crete. In Plutarch’s Life of Theseus, we can read the details
about the prototypical celebration in Crete. This celebration is re-enacted in the theōria
from Athens to Delos and back. In Delos, the labyrinth of Crete is re-enacted by way of
the “crane dance” at the festival of Apollo at Delos. The “crane dance” is the dance of
the Cretan labyrinth (the labyrinth retraces the dance-steps of the “crane dance”).
Delos is the site of this festival of Apollo, which becomes in the Phaedo the ritual frame
for the pathos of Socrates. As we remember from the Apology, Socrates himself refers to
his ordeal as his pathos, which he compares to the pathos of heroes in the heroic world.
The ship of the theōria in ritual is a recreation of the prototypical ship of the theōria in
myth. Notionally, it is the same ship, except that each of its parts has been replaced,
one by one, in the course of time, so that the ship in the time of Socrates would have no
piece in it that goes all the way back to the heroic age of Theseus. And yet, it is
materially the exact replica of the “original” ship. The ship of the theōria in myth is the
absolute ship, the ideal ship, comparable to an ideal ship in Plato’s theory of Forms,
whereas the ship of the real world is not absolute, not ideal, just as the things of this
world are not real in terms of Plato’s theory of Forms. The word in Greek that we
translate as ‘Form’ is idea, and it is from this Greek word that such English words as
idea, ideal, and idealism are borrowed. Of these borrowings, the adjective and noun
ideal come closest to the philosophical concept of Form. (Another word that is used in
Plato to express the idea of Form is eidos, which also conveys the idea of ‘genre’.)
In general, I should stress that Plato’s Phaedo is like an introductory course on Plato’s
theory of the Forms. “Forms 101,” as it were.
The idea of salvation, which is notionally started (“launched”) by the notionally
original theōria of Theseus, is to be continued by the theory that is generated by
dialogue.

What is to be saved in Plato’s Phaedo is not the sōma of Socrates, not even his psukhē per
se, but the word - that is, the word that he gets started by way of dialogue.
These observations are relevant to the words stephein ‘to garland, to make garlands for’,
and the derivative noun stephanos ‘garland’ that we saw in passage A. In Modern Greek,
the word is stephanē (stepháni), likewise meaning ‘garland’. In the neuter plural, Modern
Greek stéphana means ‘wedding garlands’; note the metonymy embedded in the phrase
used to offer best wishes to newlywed couples: kalá stéphana. In one Modern Greek
phrasebook for English-speakers, this expression is translated ‘may you have a quick
and happy wedding’.
Pictures of garlands. One picture shows an assortment of garlands on sale in a
marketplace. The flowers that make up the garland in this case are sempreviva (in
Venetian Italian, it means ‘eternally alive’; the local Greeks think it is a local Greek
word). The locale is Cythera.
The ritual of ‘garlanding’ (stephein) the stern of a ship is attested as far back as the 1600s
BCE. In the frescos of Thera, we see the painting of a ship that features a cabin on the
stern festooned with garlands. This practice survives to this day in the Greek-speaking
world, on such festive occasions as Easter.
When it comes to the treatment of traditional visions of immortalization involving
Hades as a transition, we must beware of the translator’s (Jowett’s) assumptions as
embedded in his translations. I offer the reader a general warning about Jowett’s
translation “in the world below” (the Greek is simply ekei ‘over there’). In
eschatological contexts, as in the Phaedo, the concept of Hades or “underworld” tends
to be shaded over in the original Greek of Plato.
The mystical language of immortalization is foregrounded in the Phaedo, as we see from
the following passage:
B) Plato Phaedo (69c):
And I conceive that the founders of the mysteries [teletai] had a real meaning and were
not mere triflers when they intimated in a figure [or ‘riddle’ = verb of ainigma] long ago
that he who passes without initiation [amuētos] and without ritual induction [atelestos,
from verb of telos] into the world below [= Hades] will live in a slough, but that he who
arrives there after purification [= verb of katharsis] and induction [verb of telos] will
dwell [verb of oikos] with the gods. For many, as they say in the mysteries [teletai], are
the bearers of the thyrsos [narthēx], but few are the bakkhoi [= devotees of Bacchus].

We may compare again the Christian aphorism mentioned before: ‘many are called but
few are chosen’ (Matthew 22:14). Examples of the unchosen are such “half-baked”
initiates as Kadmos and Teiresias in the Bacchae of Euripides.
What is at stake for Plato’s Socrates is not the resurrection of the body or the
preservation of the psukhē but the resurrection of the word.
The de-emphasis of corporeality can be seen even in the way the participants in the
dialogue talk about remembering Socrates. It is *not* a matter of total recall. We see
two people talking about Socrates, and one of the two, a man called Phaedo, makes
extensive “quotations” from what he remembers Socrates said.
When there is talk in the Phaedo about calling Socrates to mind, ‘to bring him to
recollection’, the expression is memnēsthai + genitive. This is not total recall, which is
expressed via memnēsthai + accusative.
Also relevant to the question of corporeality is the word pharmakon in passage A. Let me
stress, from the start, that pharmakon means not just ‘poison’; a better translation is
‘potion’. A potion is a ritual drink (notice that Socrates has to drink the pharmakon). The
semantics of libation are in effect. Note that Socrates, at the very end, wants to pour
part of the potion into the ground as a libation. To whom? Here the idea of daimonion
once again comes to mind.
The effect of the pharmakon is either death or resurrection. In Plato’s Phaedrus, we learn
that Socrates thinks of the technology of writing as a pharmakon. The pharmakon is the
letter, that is, literacy, writing. The letter can kill the word or it can resurrect the word.
We must keep this theme in mind when we come to the passage, later on, where
Socrates says that he is ‘speaking like a book’. Or, more literally, he is speaking like an
author who is communicating not by way of living speech but by way of speech
embedded in a book. We see here a meditation on the fact that we as readers are
introduced to Plato - or, in Plato’s terms, to Socrates - by way of a book. Initially,
Socrates speaks to us as if he were a book, and yet, it is the live speech of dialogue that
makes the word come alive. What matters is not his wording per se but the words that
he is starting in dialogue, to be continued by his interlocutors and by succeeding
interlocutors of generations to come, generation after generation, notionally forever.
That is why the dialogues as framed by Plato are not authorial. That is why Socrates is
not an author.
C) Plato’s Phaedo (59d-60a):
On the last morning the meeting was earlier than usual; [59e] this was owing to our
having heard on the previous evening that the sacred ship had arrived from Delos, and
therefore we agreed to meet very early at the accustomed place. On our going to the
prison, the jailer who answered the door, instead of admitting us, came out and told us
to wait and he would call us. “For the Eleven,” he said, “are now with Socrates; they are
taking off his chains, and giving orders that he is to die today.” He soon returned and

said that we might come in. [60a] On entering we found Socrates just released from
chains, and Xanthippe, whom you know, sitting by him, and holding his child in her
arms. When she saw us she uttered a cry and said, as women will: “O Socrates, this is
the last time that either you will converse with your friends, or they with you.”
Socrates turned to Crito and said: “Crito, let someone take her home.” Some of Crito’s
people accordingly led her away, crying out and beating herself.
We see from this passage the terminus of the sacred time frame of the pathos of
Socrates. The defining moment is now at hand. Consider the use of the word hōra by
Socrates in the Apology.
Note that the figure of Xanthippe with the child is more like that of Andromache with
Astyanax than what is imagined in later philosophical traditions. Xanthippe laments
the end of opportunities to have dialogues with Socrates in person. She laments this
termination not only for the friends of Socrates, but also, implicitly, for herself. When
Socrates says “take her away!” it is not so much an unfeeling attitude toward his wife. It
is more a matter of Plato’s own compartmentalization of family vs. friends. When
Socrates chooses to take a bath before his death, his gesture is worded as an act of
consideration toward his wife and other women kinfolk. Of course it is also a symbolic
gesture. No laments for Socrates. No bathing of Socrates’ corpse by the women of his
family after he dies: no, he wants to take his last bath while he is still alive. All the
sequences of funerary practice, which is the ideological basis of both the cult of the
dead and hero-cult, seem to be challenged by Socrates.
D) Plato’s Phaedo (60e-61b):
In the course of my life I have often had intimations in dreams “that I should make
music [mousikē].” The same dream came to me sometimes in one form, and sometimes
in another, but always saying the same or nearly the same words: Make and cultivate
music [mousikē], said the dream. [61a] And hitherto I had imagined that this was only
intended to exhort and encourage me in the study of philosophy, which has always
been the pursuit of my life, and is the noblest and best of music [mousikē]. The dream
was bidding me to do what I was already doing, in the same way that the competitor in
a race is called on by the spectators to run when he is already running. But I was not
certain of this, as the dream might have meant music [mousikē] in the popular sense of
the word, and being under sentence of death, and the festival giving me a respite, I
thought that I should be safer if I engaged with the holiness, [61b] and, in obedience to
the dream, composed a few verses before I departed. And first I made a hymn [humnos]
in honor of the god of the festival, and then considering that a poet, if he is really to be
a poet or maker, should not only put words together but make stories [muthoi], and as I
am not a maker of stories [muthologikos], I took some fables [muthoi] of Aesop, which I
had ready at hand and knew, and turned them into verse.
I repeated this passage here because I need to stress once again the symbolic value of
the humnos ‘hymn’ as an inauguration of “music” still to come.
E) Plato’s Phaedo (88c-89c):

[[Here Echecrates interrupts the narrative of Phaedo containing the dialogue of
Socrates with Phaedo and others. The interruption of the narrative is like a derailment
of the dialogue contained by the narrative.]]
Ech. There I feel with you - I do, Phaedo, and when you were speaking, I was beginning
to ask myself the same question: [88d] What argument can I ever trust again? For what
could be more convincing than the argument of Socrates, which has now fallen into
discredit? That the psukhē is a tuning [harmonia] is a doctrine which has always had a
wonderful attraction for me, and, when mentioned, came back to me at once, as my
own original conviction. And now I must begin again and find another argument which
will assure me that when the man is dead the psukhē dies not with him. Tell me, I beg,
[88e] how did Socrates proceed? Did he appear to share the unpleasant feeling which
you mention? or did he receive the interruption calmly and give a sufficient answer?
Tell us, as exactly as you can, what passed.
[[Here the narrative of Phaedo containing the dialogue of Socrates with Phaedo and
others is resumed after the interruption, after the derailment.]]
Phaed. Often, Echecrates, as I have admired Socrates, I never admired him more than at
that moment. [89a] That he should be able to answer was nothing, but what astonished
me was, first, the gentle and pleasant and approving manner in which he regarded the
words of the young men, and then his quick sense of the wound which had been
inflicted by the argument, and his ready application of the healing art. He might be
compared to a general rallying his defeated and broken army, urging them to follow
him and return to the field of argument.
Ech. How was that?
Phaed. You shall hear, for I was close to him on his right hand, seated on a sort of stool,
[89b] and he on a couch which was a good deal higher. Now he had a way of playing
with my hair, and then he smoothed my head, and pressed the hair upon my neck, and
said: Tomorrow, Phaedo, I suppose that these fair locks of yours will be severed. Yes,
Socrates, I suppose that they will, I replied. Not so if you will take my advice. What shall
I do with them? I said. Today, he replied, and not tomorrow, if this argument dies and
cannot be brought to life again [anabiōsasthai] by us, you and I will both shave our locks;
[89c] and if I were you, and could not maintain my ground against Simmias and Cebes, I
would myself take an oath, like the Argives, not to wear hair any more until I had
renewed the conflict and defeated them. Yes, I said, but Herakles himself is said not to
be a match for two. Summon me then, he said, and I will be your Iolaos until the sun
goes down. I summon you rather, I said, not as Herakles summoning Iolaos, but as
Iolaos might summon Herakles.
As David Elmer pointed out (2004), we see here the first moment in the inset narrative
of Phaedo where “the frame narrative breaks into the inset narrative” (this moment
happens when Echecrates interrupts the inset narrative of Phaedo). Elmer continues:
“This moment is just exactly after Socrates has asked someone else to respond to the
objections of Simmias. In the inset narrative, Socrates then turns to Phaedo himself,
who is the frame narrator to Echecrates.” After the objections of Simmias and Cebes,
the dialogic partners of Socrates are at a loss, clearly. So the interruption by Echecrates
happens at the moment when the flow of argumentation has in any case been
interrupted by the inability of the dialogic partners to come up with a good response to

the objections of Simmias and Cebes. The dialogic partners’ model of immortality,
which is pictured for them as the perfect tuning (harmonia) of the seven-string lyre, has
been shattered. It is also being shattered for Echecrates, who expresses his feelings of
despair to Phaedo as he interrupts Phaedo’s inset narrative. (On the concept of the
shattered tuning . . . GN compares the tragedy Thamyras by Sophocles, where the lyre of
Thamyras the singer disintegrates while he is playing it.)
To compare Socrates to Herakles as someone that needs to be ‘summoned’ in an hour of
need has one meaning in the world of heroes (the young nephew Iolaos ‘summons’
Herakles to help him in his hour of need - and vice versa) and another meaning in the
world of the present, when worshippers are worshipping heroes (the worshippers
‘summon’ Herakles to help them in their hour of need). When Herakles is fighting solo
against two, even he needs the help of his nephew Iolaos. After Socrates is dead, Phaedo
will not be able to fight against the likes of Simmias and Cebes. That would be a oneagainst-two
fight. The dialogic partner of Socrates, Phaedo, wants to summon Socrates
from the dead as if Socrates were Herakles. Phaedo can be Iolaos to the Socrates as
Herakles, although Socrates thinks that he can be Iolaos and let Phaedo be Herakles in a
debate with Simmias and Cebes. Either way, Socrates would be dead, and the living
dialogic partner would have to team up with the dead words of Socrates who is shown
engaging in dialogue inside a book. These dead words can be made to come alive only in
a “live dialogue.”
F) Plato Phaedo (102d): He [= Socrates] added, laughing, I am speaking like a book
[sungraphikōs erein], but I believe that what I am now saying is true.
G) Plato Phaedo (117a-118a):
Crito, when he heard this, made a sign to the servant, and the servant went in, and
remained for some time, and then returned with the jailer carrying a cup of poison
[pharmakon]. Socrates said: You, my good friend, who are experienced in these matters,
shall give me directions how I am to proceed. The man answered: You have only to
walk about [117b] until your legs are heavy, and then to lie down, and the poison will
act. At the same time he handed the cup to Socrates, who in the easiest and gentlest
manner, without the least fear or change of color or feature, looking at the man with all
his eyes, Echecrates, as his manner was, took the cup and said: What do you say about
making a libation out of this cup to any god? May I, or not? The man answered: We only
prepare, Socrates, just so much as we deem enough. I understand, he said: [117c] yet I
may and must pray to the gods to prosper my journey from this to that other world—
may this, then, which is my prayer, be granted to me. Then holding the cup to his lips,
quite readily and cheerfully he drank off the poison. And hitherto most of us had been
able to control our sorrow; but now when we saw him drinking, and saw too that he
had finished the draught, we could no longer forbear, and in spite of myself my own
tears were flowing fast; so that I covered my face and wept over myself, for certainly I
was not weeping over him, [117d] but at the thought of my own calamity in having lost
such a companion. Nor was I the first, for Crito, when he found himself unable to
restrain his tears, had got up and moved away, and I followed; and at that moment.
Apollodorus, who had been weeping all the time, broke out in a loud cry which made

cowards of us all. Socrates alone retained his calmness: What is this strange outcry? he
said. I sent away the women mainly in order that they might not offend in this way,
[117e] for I have heard that a man should die in peace. Be quiet, then, and have
patience. When we heard that, we were ashamed, and refrained our tears; and he
walked about until, as he said, his legs began to fail, and then he lay on his back,
according to the directions, and the man who gave him the poison now and then looked
at his feet and legs; and after a while he pressed his foot hard and asked him if he could
feel; and he said, no; and then his leg, [118a] and so upwards and upwards, and showed
us that he was cold and stiff. And he felt them himself, and said: When the poison
reaches the heart, that will be the end. He was beginning to grow cold about the groin,
when he uncovered his face, for he had covered himself up, and said (they were his last
words)—he said: Crito, I owe the sacrifice of a rooster to Asklepios; will you remember
to pay the debt? The debt shall be paid, said Crito; is there anything else? There was no
answer to this question; but in a minute or two a movement was heard, and the
attendants uncovered him; his eyes were set, and Crito closed his eyes and mouth. Such
was the end, Echecrates, of our friend, whom I may truly call the wisest, and most just,
and best of all the men whom I have ever known.
In the figure of the hero Asklepios, we see the theme of resurrection. For Socrates, what
matters is the resurrection of the word.
Death is the necessary pharmakon for leaving the everyday life and for entering the
everlasting cycle of resurrecting the word.