Socrates (C. 470–399 Bce)

Life

Socrates was born in Athens around 470 BCE and lived in the city all his life, apart from military service abroad. Little is known of the circumstances of his life. His father, Sophroniscus, is said by some ancient sources to have been a stonemason, and in Plato's Theaetetus (149a) Socrates says that his mother, Phainarete, was a midwife. That may indeed be true, though the fact that the name literally means "revealing excellence" suggests the possibility that Plato has invented the story in allusion to Socrates' role as midwife to the ideas of others (Theaetetus 149–151). Because Socrates served in the infantry, who had to provide their own arms and equipment, his circumstances, at least initially, must have been reasonably prosperous, but Plato and other writers emphasize his poverty in later life, which they attribute to his spending all his time in philosophical discussion. The same sources stress that, unlike the Sophists, he never took payment for his philosophical activity, and he may have depended largely on support from wealthier friends. During his lifetime Athens became the principal center of intellectual and cultural life in Greece, attracting from all over the Greek world intellectuals who developed and popularized the tradition of natural philosophy begun by the Ionian philosophers of the previous century, together with exciting new argumentative techniques and radical questioning of traditional beliefs about theology, morals, and society.

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