SOCRATES’ COMPANY

(Before we open this seemingly out-of-place entry, let me reassure the reader that our PreSocratica section has not suddenly become a jumble. We shall be ending it with Socrates proper, but his present “Company” has little bearing on his time, as Socrates, admittedly, lived outside time. In Plato’s Apology [of Socrates], the great sage names certain names of persons whose company he would have liked to keep, but considering that they are all dead, he doesn’t mind dying himself, as this is the most practical way to join their company. As the focus of this entry is Socrates’ company and not Socrates himself, this entry is well in place.)

We are not in too much of a hurry to get to Thales and the other official pre-Socratics yet as we aren’t quite done with the pre-Thaleans. In search of more of our pre-Thalean clues, let us listen to Socrates speaking to the Athenian court which is about to convict him, in Plato’s Dialogue Apology, and pay attention, as he will be naming names.----

“If indeed when the pilgrim arrives in the world below, he is delivered from the professors of justice in this world, and finds the true judges who are said to give judgment there: Minos and Rhadamanthus and Aeacus and Triptolemus, and other sons of God, who were righteous in their own life, that pilgrimage will be worth making. What would not a man give if he might converse with Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer? Nay, if this be true, let me die again and again. I, too, shall have a wonderful interest in a place, where I can converse with Palamedes, and Ajax the son of Telamon, and other heroes of old, who have suffered death through an unjust judgment; and there will be no small pleasure as I think, in comparing my own sufferings with theirs…”

Most of the names named by Socrates are mythological, while a few others are real or at least questionable. For obvious reasons, we shall focus on one short sentence of the passage above, where four concrete names are given: Orpheus and Musaeus, Hesiod and Homer. Of these, Hesiod and Homer have been discussed in a couple of separate entries earlier. Orpheus and his pupil Musaeus (not to be confused with the much later poet Musaeus, the author of Hero and Leander) are both mythological names, which are not included in the authoritative Webster’s Biographical Dictionary precisely on that account.

However, Bertrand Russell in his History of Western philosophy gives a lot of his attention to Orpheus and even puts a question mark with regard to his real life existence. It is therefore our intention now not just out of respect for Russell but simply because Orpheus is such a fascinating character with a peculiar connection to Pythagoras (who is of course one of the giants of this section), to write a special entry (albeit a short one) about the person of Orpheus, followed by one about the religious cult he had given rise to.