Fall 2015

4 4 I n t e r p r e t a t i o n Volume 42 / Issue 1
were “birds, sayings, voices, and prophets,” Socrates called his messenger the
daimonion, that is, something divine. 30 Socrates’s proof of the truthfulness
of his claim was that whenever he conveyed the counsels of the god to his
friends, they never turned out to be false. Socrates was not only more pious,
but also more blessed than other people.
This argument was clearly not a direct answer to the impiety charge. For
the formal charge was that Socrates did not believe in “the gods of the city.”
In response, Socrates pointed out his similarity with “all people,” not particularly
with his fellow citizens; thus, his piety seems to be the highest common
denominator among Greeks or human beings in general. Instead of attempting
to directly refute the charge, Socrates boasted that he was more pious and
blessed than his fellow Athenians, which might be taken to imply that their
view of the gods was wrong or insufficient. Hence, he failed to address the
charge that he did not believe in the orthodox gods of the Athenians.
Having apparently refuted the impiety charge, Socrates shifted his locus
of concern to the demonstration of his outstanding piety. Hermogenes made
this clear. According to him, the judges, upon hearing Socrates’s statement,
started making a great deal of noise (14). Some of them clamored because
they were envious that Socrates received greater things from the gods. Others
clamored because they did not believe that Socrates was more blessed than
they were. Socrates had successfully shifted the issue from the questioning of
his impiety to the questioning of his blessedness. This infuriated the jury, but
their clamor was also evidence of their envy. Socrates, “by extolling himself
at the court, [brought] envy upon himself” (32).
Socrates’s reaction to the clamor of the jury was even more provocative.
According to him, when Chaerephon asked Apollo about Socrates before the
many, he received the answer that no human being was more liberal, more
just, and more moderate than Socrates (14). 31 Thus, Socrates became more
boastful, for he increased the number of his virtues by making use of direct
divine authority. Socrates had initially set out to prove his piety, but here
he enumerated three additional virtues: liberality, justice, and moderation.
Socrates told the story of the oracle aiming at a specific type of person, that
is, the type that did not wish to believe in Socrates’s blessedness (14). Since
30
In this respect, too, Socrates differed from Hermogenes, who called the messengers “voices,
dreams, and birds” (Symposium 4.48).
31
This story does not establish his belief in Apollo, the god of Delphi, for there is no mention that
Socrates sent Chaerephon there. Apollo is also silent about piety as a Socratic virtue (Strauss, Xenophon’s
Socrates, 131–32).