Socrates: A Man for Our Times Read Online Free Page A

nose better shaped than mine?” “Yes, if God made the nose for smelling, for your nostrils are turned down, whereas mine are wide and turned up and can receive smells from every direction.” “I grant you your mouth is better, for if God gave us mouths to eat yours is big enough to gobble three times as much as mine.” “Yes, and my kisses are more sweet and luscious than yours since my lips are so big and thick.”
    Socrates, then, was ugly, and later in life he developed a paunch. He had a tendency to be bow-legged and walked in a sideways motion. As he was in the streets every day, he became an unmistakable figure in Athens, and for many a comic one, even disreputable. Sometimes he was mocked and even jostled. Asked why he did not resent such treatment, he replied, “If a donkey kicks you, do you take legal action against him?” Or: “If a man slaps my face, he does me no evil, only himself.” As Alcibiades noticed during the retreat from Delium, Socrates was imperturbable. He exuded serenity. There were many things he deplored, but nothing left him depressed. If he was angry, he never showed it—except, in contrast to most people, who raise their voices in anger, he lowered his, and spoke quietly. He was genial, and reminds me of Lord Holland, of whom the poet Thomas Moore said, “He came down to breakfast every morning looking as though he had just received a tremendous stroke of good fortune.” To those who knew Socrates, he was impossible to dislike and difficult not to love.
    There may have been one exception: his wife. Or, possibly, wives. It is notorious that exceptionally good public figures are difficult to live with. When Lady Longford, married to the famous philanthropist and do-gooder Frank Longford, was questioned on this point, she said, “What do we call the wife of a saint?” and answered herself: “A martyr.” There are confusing tales that Socrates had an earlier (or later, or bigamous) marriage to a woman called Myrto. If she gave birth to children, they are unrecorded even in traditional stories. What we do know is that he had, at the time of his death, a wife called Xanthippe and had three children by her. He had evidently married her late in life, possibly already over fifty. At the time of his death, aged seventy, the eldest was only a youth of about seventeen or eighteen, and the others younger still. One may have been a child in arms. When Xanthippe, as we know, spent Socrates’ last night with him in the jail, she had a child with her, presumably because he was too young to be left alone. Plato and Xenophon, our two best sources, say nothing against Xanthippe’s character. But various traditions present her as a shrew, who shouted at Socrates and gave him a hard time. Why had he married her instead of a more docile woman? He answered, “Because we know from the business of horse training that owners often like to pick a difficult animal, which poses more interesting problems.” Could he live happily with her? “Yes, and it proves I could live happily with anyone.” She was a splendid subject for his jokes, as when, having bawled him out at length, inside the house, she poured a basin of slops on him from the roof. He said, “As always, the thunder is followed by rain.” So far as I can see, he was perfectly content with her, and it is notable (for the age) that he was still having sex with her and begetting children in his late sixties. Xanthippe must have contributed to his high opinion of the ability of women and to his belief that in most matters they were the equal of men. My belief is that their life together was happy.
    What strikes one most about Socrates as a human being, however, is not just his opinions, often unusual, even revolutionary, and his personality, which was riveting to those who came close to it, but his reciprocal delight in the people and city of Athens. If ever a man was at home in the place where he was born, lived, and died, it was Socrates the