<PING! MIZ UV!> dammit, Socrates *again*?

Yah.

Here's sumpthin' to chew on.

Noooo! Not the choccy! Give it back!

This: I looked up when Aristophanes came out with "The Clouds". That's the
first play he wrote where he mocked Socrates. Lookit all I found:

429 BCE - Callias the comic poet writes a play in which he whaps Socrates.

423 BCE - Aristophanes the comic poet wins third place in the The Diasia
Festival with his cruel satire about Socrates, "The Clouds".

423 BCE -Amipsias wins second place in the The Diasia Festival with his
comic play named after Socrates' music teacher, "Connus" (in which the
playwright insults Socrates).

424 BCE - PLATO IS BORN. <--------

420-410 BCE - In a fragment of a play by Eupolis, the comic poet has
Socrates at a party, splitting hairs and stealing a wine ladle.

So, I'm thinkin' that's a good bet that Plato didn't make up Socrates. The
highly reputable historian Xenophon, who personally knew and wrote about
Socrates, was born in 425 BCE. 'Course they coulda been gifted babies.

Oh, and a comic poet named Teleclides, a contemporary of Callias, also took a
shot at Socrates. He, Callias and Aristophanes all "insinuated that Socrates
helped Euripides to write tragedies". [1] (Socrates was reputed to hang out
with and be a bad influence on Euripides.) They shared the opinion that
Euripides was a *most* sucky writer who lowered the bar for Greek tragedies.

Aristophanes really, really hated Socrates the most. In "The Clouds" he
lampoons the way Socrates taught Athenian (male) youths to observe everything
around them, and to think about and question it all. He has Socrates makin'
fun of the Gods. Then Aristophanes has the students turn into dangerous crazy
citizens wot are gonna destroy Athenian society.

Aristophanes wrote at least two more plays (in 414 and in 405) about Socrates
with the same theme, only with more deadly serious satire. Lotsa Athenians
were first laughin' at Socrates, and then gettin' concerned about him (and
about Sophists in general, although he doesn't appear to really be one).

Plato wrote that Socrates said that it was the damned comic poets, especially
Aristophanes, wot gave him such a bad rep that were really responsible for him
gettin' hit with stupid charges to begin with, and then a death sentence--by
*popular vote*. 'Cause, remember, the charges against him were for being the
kind of peep wot Aristophanes had portrayed him to be in his plays.

Lookit, Socrates died in 399 BCE. There's historic proof that he had been a
topic of popular Athenian culture during his lifetime, first farcical and then
very controversial, since at least 429 BCE. The Diasia Festival honored Zeus
and was the most humongous yearly event in Classical Greece, EVERYBODY
celebrated. The only time ya got to see plays was then and winning at the
Diasia was a major deal, so a lot of Athenians woulda noticed the Mockin'
Socrates plays (those are just the ones we know about). And yet, no one has
ever found even a scrap of anything where one Athenian peep who lived back
then even as much as implied that there was no such person as Socrates. No one
questioned the decades of satire about him.

Know how many jurors Socrates had at his trial? 501. Yah, five-hundred-one.
That would have been standard for his case. After the trial city peeps would
have posted in a public area an announcement sayin' exactly what happened--the
main peeps involved, the charges, the verdict--and endin' with "This is wot
the People of Athens decided". And, there's no evidence of *anyone* protesting
the many years of "Shamey, shamey, Athenian Citizens!" writing that soon
followed the death of Socrates by sayin' "Who? WTF? We *so* did NOT do
anything so shameful and contrary to wot we brag about ourselves! I think
SOMEBODY woulda noticed, yah? Cite!"

So, in closing, I say, "Neener!"

<hopping off soap box>

The Defense Naps!


--
Sylvia

[1] http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/socrates/notes.html
.

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