Complete Works (26 page)

After saying this he got up and went to another room to take his bath, and Crito followed him and he told us to wait for him. So we stayed, talking among ourselves, questioning what had been said, and then again talking of the great misfortune that had befallen us. We all felt as if we [b] had lost a father and would be orphaned for the rest of our lives. When he had washed, his children were brought to him—two of his sons were small and one was older—and the women of his household came to him. He spoke to them before Crito and gave them what instructions he wanted. Then he sent the women and children away, and he himself joined us. It was now close to sunset, for he had stayed inside for some time. He came and sat down after his bath and conversed for a short while, when the [c] officer of the Eleven came and stood by him and said: “I shall not reproach you as I do the others, Socrates. They are angry with me and curse me when, obeying the orders of my superiors, I tell them to drink the poison. During the time you have been here I have come to know you in other ways as the noblest, the gentlest and the best man who has ever come here. So now too I know that you will not make trouble for me; you know who is responsible and you will direct your anger against them. You know what message I bring. Fare you well, and try to endure what you must [d] as easily as possible.” The officer was weeping as he turned away and went out. Socrates looked up at him and said: “Fare you well also; we shall do as you bid us.” And turning to us he said: “How pleasant the man is! During the whole time I have been here he has come in and conversed with me from time to time, a most agreeable man. And how genuinely he now weeps for me. Come, Crito, let us obey him. Let someone bring the poison if it is ready; if not, let the man prepare it.”

But Socrates, said Crito, I think the sun still shines upon the hills and [e] has not yet set. I know that others drink the poison quite a long time after they have received the order, eating and drinking quite a bit, and some of them enjoy intimacy with their loved ones. Do not hurry; there is still some time.

It is natural, Crito, for them to do so, said Socrates, for they think they derive some benefit from doing this, but it is not fitting for me. I do not
[117]
expect any benefit from drinking the poison a little later, except to become ridiculous in my own eyes for clinging to life, and be sparing of it when there is none left. So do as I ask and do not refuse me.

Hearing this, Crito nodded to the slave who was standing near him; the slave went out and after a time came back with the man who was to administer the poison, carrying it made ready in a cup. When Socrates saw him he said: “Well, my good man, you are an expert in this; what must one do?”—”Just drink it and walk around until your legs feel heavy, [b] and then lie down and it will act of itself.” And he offered the cup to Socrates, who took it quite cheerfully, Echecrates, without a tremor or any change of feature or color, but looking at the man from under his eyebrows as was his wont, asked: “What do you say about pouring a libation from this drink? It is allowed?”—”We only mix as much as we believe will suffice,” said the man.

I understand, Socrates said, but one is allowed, indeed one must, utter [c] a prayer to the gods that the journey from here to yonder may be fortunate. This is my prayer and may it be so.

And while he was saying this, he was holding the cup, and then drained it calmly and easily. Most of us had been able to hold back our tears reasonably well up till then, but when we saw him drinking it and after he drank it, we could hold them back no longer; my own tears came in floods against my will. So I covered my face. I was weeping for myself, not for him—for my misfortune in being deprived of such a comrade. [d] Even before me, Crito was unable to restrain his tears and got up. Apollodorus had not ceased from weeping before, and at this moment his noisy tears and anger made everybody present break down, except Socrates. “What is this,” he said, “you strange fellows. It is mainly for this reason that I sent the women away, to avoid such unseemliness, for I am told one [e] should die in good omened silence. So keep quiet and control yourselves.”

His words made us ashamed, and we checked our tears. He walked around, and when he said his legs were heavy he lay on his back as he had been told to do, and the man who had given him the poison touched his body, and after a while tested his feet and legs, pressed hard upon his foot and asked him if he felt this, and Socrates said no. Then he pressed
[118]
his calves, and made his way up his body and showed us that it was cold and stiff. He felt it himself and said that when the cold reached his heart
[118a]
he would be gone. As his belly was getting cold Socrates uncovered his head—he had covered it—and said—these were his last words—“Crito, we owe a cock to Asclepius;
¹⁹
make this offering to him and do not forget.”—“It shall be done,” said Crito, “tell us if there is anything else.” But there was no answer. Shortly afterwards Socrates made a movement; the man uncovered him and his eyes were fixed. Seeing this Crito closed his mouth and his eyes.

Such was the end of our comrade, Echecrates, a man who, we would say, was of all those we have known the best, and also the wisest and the most upright.

1
. Legend says that Minos, king of Crete, compelled the Athenians to send seven youths and seven maidens every year to be sacrificed to the Minotaur until Theseus saved them and killed the monster.

2
. The father of Critobulus is Crito, after whom the dialogue
Crito
is named. Several of the other friends of Socrates mentioned here also appear in other dialogues. Hermogenes is one of the speakers in
Cratylus
. Epigenes is mentioned in
Apology
33e, as is Aeschines, who was a writer of Socratic dialogues. Menexenus has a part in
Lysis
and has a dialogue named after him; Ctesippus appears in both
Lysis
and
Euthydemus
. Euclides and Terpsion are speakers in the introductory conversation of
Theaetetus
, and Euclides too wrote Socratic dialogues. Simmias and Cebes are mentioned in
Crito
, 45b, as having come to Athens with enough money to secure Socrates’ escape.

3
. The Eleven were the police commissioners of Athens.

4
. Socrates refers to Evenus as a Sophist and teacher of the young in
Apology
20a, c.

5
. See Introductory Note.

6
. That is, the true worshippers of Dionysus, as opposed to those who only carry the external symbols of his worship.

7
. Endymion was granted eternal sleep by Zeus.

8
. Anaxagoras of Clazomenae was born at the beginning of the fifth century
B.C.
He came to Athens as a young man and spent most of his life there in the study of natural philosophy. He is quoted later in the dialogue (97c ff.) as claiming that the universe is directed by Mind (
Nous
). The reference here is to his statement that in the original state of the world all its elements were thoroughly commingled.

9
. Cf.
Meno
81e ff., where Socrates does precisely that.

10
. The Euripus is the straits between the island of Euboea and Boeotia on the Greek mainland; its currents were both violent and variable.

11
.
Odyssey
xx.17–18.

12
. Harmonia was in legend the wife of Cadmus, the founder of Thebes. Socrates’ punning joke is simply that, having dealt with Harmonia (harmony), we must now deal with Cadmus (i.e., Cebes, the other Theban).

13
. Alternatively: “If someone should cling to your hypothesis itself, you would dismiss him and would not answer until you had examined whether the consequences that follow from it agree with one another or contradict one another.”

14
. The reference is to 70d–71a above.

15
. The
Telephus
of Aeschylus is not extant.

16
. A proverbial expression whose origin is obscure.

17
.
Iliad
viii.14; cf. viii.481.

18
. For these features of the underworld, see
Odyssey
x.511 ff, xi.157.

19
. A cock was sacrificed to Asclepius by the sick people who slept in his temples, hoping for a cure. Socrates apparently means that death is a cure for the ills of life.

CRATYLUS

Translated by C.D.C. Reeve.

This dialogue is on a topic of great interest to Plato’s contemporaries that figures
little in our own discussions in philosophy of language: the ‘correctness of
names’. When a name (or, for that matter, any other word or phrase) is the correct
one for naming a given thing or performing another linguistic function,
what is the source of this correctness? Socrates canvasses two opposed positions.
The first is defended by his close friend Hermogenes (Hermogenes was in
Socrates’ entourage on the day of his death), the impecunious brother of Callias,
the rich patron of sophists at Athens in whose house the drama of
Protagoras
is set. Hermogenes adopts the minimalist position that correctness is by
convention: whatever is agreed in a community to be the name to use for a
thing is the correct one in that community. The other position is defended by
Cratylus, a historical person mentioned also by Aristotle, whose own information
about him may however derive from what the character Cratylus says in
this dialogue. Cratylus adopts the obscure ‘naturalist’ position that each name
names only whatever it does ‘by nature’—no matter what the conventions in
any community may be. As a first approximation, this means that under expert
etymological examination each name can be reduced to a disguised description
correctly revealing the nature of the thing named by it—and that revelatory
capacity is what makes it the correct name for that thing. Socrates
examines the views of each disputant and attempts to resolve the conflict between
them. But he concludes that the knowledge of names—the etymological
art professing to reveal the true nature of things by working out the ultimate
descriptive meanings of the words we use—is of no real importance. All it can
ever reveal is what those who first introduced our words thought was the nature
of reality, and that might well be wrong—indeed, Socrates employs etymological
principles themselves to argue that the Greek language indicates, falsely,
that the nature of reality is constant change and flux. To learn the truth we
have to go behind words altogether, to examine with our minds, and grasp directly
the permanent, unchanging natures of things as they are in themselves:
Platonic Forms.

Readers are always puzzled at the fact that Plato has Socrates devote more
than half his discussion to proposing etymological analyses of a whole series of
names, beginning with the names of the gods. We should bear in mind that,
when Plato was writing, expertise in etymology was highly regarded, precisely
as a means of discovering the ultimate truth about things through coming to
possess knowledge of names. At least part of Plato’s purpose seems to be to establish
Socrates’ credentials as a first-rate practitioner of the art of etymology as then practiced, better than the ‘experts’ themselves. When Socrates then also
argues that knowledge of names is an unimportant thing, he can be taken to
speak with the authority not just of philosophy but even of etymological science
itself—as an insider, not an outsider looking in. Somewhat similarly, in
Phaedrus
and
Menexenus
philosophy is credited with the unique ability actually
to do well what rhetoric, another prestigious contemporary expertise, professed to be able to do on its own.

J.M.C.

[383]
H
ERMOGENES
: Shall we let Socrates here join our discussion?

C
RATYLUS
: If you like.

H
ERMOGENES
: Cratylus says, Socrates, that there is a correctness of name for each thing, one that belongs to it by nature. A thing’s name isn’t whatever people agree to call it—some bit of their native language that applies to it—but there is a natural correctness of names, which is the [b] same for everyone, Greek or foreigner. So, I ask him whether his own name is truly ‘Cratylus’. He agrees that it is. “What about Socrates?” I say. “His name is ‘Socrates’.” “Does this also hold for everyone else? Is the name we call him his name?” “It certainly doesn’t hold of you. Your name isn’t ‘Hermogenes’, not even if everyone calls you by it.” Eagerly, I ask him to tell me what he means. He responds sarcastically and makes nothing
[384]
clear. He pretends to possess some private knowledge which would force me to agree with him and say the very things about names that he says himself, were he to express it in plain terms. So, if you can somehow interpret Cratylus’ oracular utterances, I’d gladly listen. Though I’d really rather find out what you yourself have to say about the correctness of names, if that’s all right with you.

S
OCRATES
: Hermogenes, son of Hipponicus, there is an ancient proverb [b] that “fine things are very difficult” to know about, and it certainly isn’t easy to get to know about names. To be sure, if I’d attended Prodicus’ fifty-drachma lecture course, which he himself advertises as an exhaustive treatment of the topic, there’d be nothing to prevent you from learning the precise truth about the correctness of names straightaway. But as [c] I’ve heard only the one-drachma course, I don’t know the truth about it. Nonetheless, I am ready to investigate it along with you and Cratylus. As for his denying that your real name is ‘Hermogenes’, I suspect he’s making fun of you. Perhaps he thinks you want to make money but fail every time you try.
¹
In any case, as I was saying, it’s certainly difficult to know about these matters, so we’ll have to conduct a joint investigation to see who is right, you or Cratylus.