Notes and Comments on Phaedo -- 4

6 June 2023

Notes and Comments on Phaedo – 4

Echecrates:  “Well, then, what was the conversation?”

Phaedo:  “I will try to tell you everything from the beginning.  On the previous days I and the others had always been in the habit of visiting Socrates.  We used to meet at daybreak in the court where the trial took place, for it was near the prison; and every day we used to wait about, talking with each other, until the prison was opened, for it was not opened early; and when it was opened, we went in to Socrates and passed most of the day with him.  On that day we came together earlier; for the day before, when we left the prison in the evening we heard that the ship had arrived from Delos.  So we agreed to come to the usual place as early in the morning as possible.  And we came, and the jailer who usually answered the door came out and told us to wait and not go in until he told us.  ‘For,’ he said, ‘the eleven are releasing Socrates from his fetters and giving directions how he is to die today.’  So after a little delay he came and told us to go in.  We went in then and Xanthippe – you know her – with his little son in her arms, sitting beside him.  Now when Xanthippe saw us, she cried out and said the kind of thing that women always do say: ‘Oh Socrates, this is the last time now that your friends will speak to you or you to them.’  And Socrates glanced at Crito and said, ‘Crito, let somebody take her home.’  And some of Crito’s people took her away wailing and beating her breast.  But Socrates sat up on his couch and bent his leg and rubbed it with his hand, and while he was rubbing it, he said, ‘What a strange thing, my friends, that seems to be which men call pleasure!   How wonderfully it is related to that which seems to be its opposite, pain, in that they will not both come to a man at the same time, and yet if he pursues the one and captures it, he is generally obliged to take the other also, as if the two were joined together in one head.  And I think,’ he said, ‘if Aesop had thought of them, he would have made a tale telling how they were at war and god wished to reconcile them, and when he could not do that, he fastened their heads together, and for that reason, when one of them comes to anyone, the other follows after.  Just so it seems that in my case, after pain was in my leg on account of the fetter, pleasure appears to have come following after.’”

(Plato, Phaedo, translated by Harold North Fowler, Plato I, Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, Phaedo, Phaedrus, Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1914, pages 207-211, ISBN: 0674990404)

1.  “… the ship had arrived from Delos.”  The word ‘Delos’ means, according to scholars I  looked up, something like ‘apparent’, ‘unconcealed’, ‘clear’, ‘brought to light’.  The ship returning from Delos, (the ship is discussed above in Notes 3), is a symbol that something is going to be brought to light, that something will become clear, something will be unconcealed.  It is also a symbol for Socrates transitioning to a brighter realm of existence where the true nature of existence is no longer concealed.  This symbol is strengthened by noting that the students of Socrates used to gather at ‘daybreak’ and wait patiently to talk with Socrates.  Daybreak is when things are ‘brought to light’, daybreak is the transition from darkness to light; in this way the pattern of their meeting is replicated at a symbolic level, by the return of the ship from Delos.

2.  The prison itself is a symbol of life in the material realm.  This kind of symbol is used by Plato in a number of contexts; most famously in the allegory of the cave.  The cave symbolizes mundane existence and those who dwell in the cave are shackled, just as Socrates is shackled in prison.  The prisoners in the cave have to turn to the light and climb out of the cave to understand the real world that transcends the world of the cave.  Similarly, Socrates will be transcending the physical prison, and the prison of materiality, the prison of the body, when he is executed.

3.  ‘The Eleven’ were officials, elected for yearly terms, in charge of executions and all matters that related to executions.  (I don’t know why eleven were selected.)  For example, The Eleven were in charge of appropriating the property of someone who was executed and either selling it or redistributing it, as the case may be. 

In Phaedo The Eleven are ‘releasing Socrates from his fetters.’  The role of The Eleven is thus given a positive turn, that of releasing Socrates from the chains that had bound him for so many days.  It is interesting how in this dialogue The Eleven play a dual role; on the one hand they are carrying out the orders of the State, on the other hand they are symbolically agents of release from earthly bonds and the limitations of having a material body. 

4.  The brief scene with Xanthippe, holding their youngest child, and Socrates is touching.  It means that Xanthippe was able to speak to Socrates one to one, while the students of Socrates were waiting outside the jail.  Naturally Xanthippe is distressed and expresses her distress by noting that this will be the last time that Socrates will be able to speak with his students. 

The parting of Socrates and Xanthippe, along with their youngest child, is a prelude to Socrates parting from the earthly, and material, realm altogether. 

5.  When Socrates first speaks to his gathered students he observes how the opposites of pleasure and pain seem to be intimately connected.  This is the first comment on the nature of opposites, and the way opposites are connected, in the dialogue.  Opposites and their relationship is a major theme in Phaedo and will be discussed later.