[Niall_Livingstone]_A_Commentary_on_Isocrates'_Busiris

32 INTRODUCTIONPolycrates' best known work by far, both among ancient authorsand in modern scholarship, is his Accusation of Socrates." It owes itsnotoriety to its unusual, and sensational, theme, but more particularlyto the fact that as early as the third century B.C. it was wronglybelieved to be the actual prosecution speech used at Socrates' trial. 78This idea was refuted on internal evidence by Favorinus, but remainedcurrent, 79 and has encouraged modern scholars to form a conceptionof the Accusation of Socrates which would place it on quite adifferent level from the rest of Polycrates' work. 80 Scholars acceptthat Polycrates' speech was not the real accusation, but often assumethat it was nonetheless a serious piece of propaganda: a work whichgave authentic expression to the views of Socrates' accusers, and provokedthe dead philosopher's friends and associates to respond bywriting in his defence. 81Central to this assessment of the Accusation of Socrates is the convictionthat correspondences between Xenophon's Socratic writingsand the Apologia Socratis of Libanius point to Polycrates as their commonsource, and that from these correspondences we can recon-77Bus. 4-6, Aelian Var. hist. XI. 10, D.L. II.38-39, Quint. II.17.4 and III.l.ll,Themistius XXIII 296bc, Epist. Socr. XIV. 3, I in Ael. Arist. III p. 480 Dindorf (cf.p. 319), Suda s.v. no 1977 Adler. Modern literature includes Cobet 1858pp. 662-682; Breitenbach 1869; Hirzel 1887; Blass II.368-70; Forster 1909 pp.1-4; Markowski 1910; Mesk 1910; Wilamowitz 1919 II.95-105; HumbertKiihn 1960; Dodds 1959 pp. 28 f., 270-72, 371; Erbse 1961; Brickhouse and Smith1989 pp. 71-87.78 Hermippus F 32 Wehrli (in D.L. II.38). On Hermippus' reliability as a source,see Wehrli's note ad loc.: 'gehort ihm nicht mehr als die spielerische Kombinationder verschiedenen Namen von Klagern, welche iiberliefert waren.'79)Favorinus quoted in D.L. II.39. Favorinusobserves that Polycrates' speech mentioned the rebuilding of the Long Walls byConon, six years after Socrates' death: this gives 394 as a terminus post quem for theAccusation of Socrates. The importance of Favorinus' testimony was brought to theattention of modern scholarship by Richard Bentley (Bentley 1697). (The fact thatthe speech was a fictional accusation, written after Socrates' death, is also sufficientlyproven by Bus. 6(referring to Socrates and Busiris)—it is clearlyimplied that the living Socrates did not have the opportunity to evaluate Polycrates'speech.) For the persistence of the error in antiquity, see e.g. Themistius XXIII296bc, I in Ael. Arist. III p. 480 Dindorf, Suda s.v. II da'sstatement that Polycrates wrote two speeches Tor Anytus and Meletus' may be basedon the principle that two prosecutors would need two speeches, or may reflect twosources both imagining Polycrates to have written the real speech, but each givinga different prosecutor's name.80 See especially Humbert 1930, Treves 1952, and Chroust 1955 and 1957.81 For an example of the continuing prevalence of this view see Brickhouse andSmith 1989 pp. 71-87.