Socrates' attempt to save Theramenes

di George E. Pesely

The Ancient History Bulletin, 2/2 (1988), pp. 31-33

In a recent article,¹ Phillip Harding rejects A. Andrewes’ effort² to divorce the “rubbish” about Theramenes found in Diodorus 14.3-5 from the consistently favorable interpretation of Theramenes found elsewhere in Diodorus Siculus, which Harding and Andrewes both rightly view as utlimately derived from the Oxyrhynchus Historian.

I believe that we must exonerate the Oxyrhynchus Historian from responsibility for one passage in Diodorus — the account of Socrates’ attempt to rescue Theramenes from execution at the hands of the Thirty (14.5.1-3, to ησυχιαν εσχον. This passage resembles stories in two other late sources³ of Isocrates’ intervention when Theramenes was about to be led off to his death. Diodorus has inserted into his narrative, which otherwise at this point is an abridgement of Ephorus, an anecdote drawn from another source; the passage can be excised from his narrative without damaging its coherence. The original form of the anecdote featured Isocrates; the alteration of the name to Socrates may have been present in Diodorus’ immediate source, which may have been some long-forgotten collection of anecdotes about philosophers.⁴

In Diodorus’ version, Theramenes had earlier imbibed philosophy from Socrates. When the Thirty gave the order for Theramenes’ arrest, he leapt up to the altar of Hestia in the Boule. The attendants began to drag him away, whereupon Socrates and two associates tried to stop them, but Theramenes asked that they desist: he would consider it the greatest calamity if he were to become the cause of the death of his dearest companions. Since Socrates and the others saw no one else lending them support, they held their peace.

In the Life of Isocrates from the Lives of the Ten Orators, wrongly attributed to Plutarch, this anecdote follows naturally after the mention of Theramenes the Rhetor as one of the teachers of Isocrates. When Theramenes was being arrested by the Thirty and had fled to the altar of Hestia in the Boule, and everyone else was terrified, Isocrates alone stood up to help him, but Theramenes himself urged him to keep quiet, since it would be more painful for him if any of his friends shared his misfortune.

The third version comes from an anonymous Life of Isocrates thought to be the product of Zosimus of Ascalon.⁵ Again the anecdote follows the naming of Theramenes the Rhetor as one of the teachers of Isocrates (with an intervening digression on the term κοθορνος. When Theramenes was being led off to his death, Isocrates followed, hoping to give honor to his teacher by sharing his death. Theramenes finally persuaded him otherwise by saying, “If you are not left behind, my teaching perishes with me; you will honor me more by remaining alive and proclaiming my teaching.”

Clearly there were various versions of the Life of Isocrates in circulation. Normally the Life begins with particulars of Isocrates’ parentage and education; commonly the four rhetoricians Teisias of Syracuse, Gorgias of Leontini, Prodicus of Ceos, and Theramenes the Rhetor are named, either as forming a sequence of masters and pupils or, less carefully, as if Isocrates had heard all four in person.⁶ Isocrates’ would-be rescue of Theramenes, when reported, is the first incident mentioned in his career. The version found in Pseudo-Plutarch appends to this incident the notice that certain technai of Theramenes, those which go under Boton’s name, were of use to Isocrates when he was prosecuted by sycophants (Mor. 837A).

Taking into account the alternative versions of the abortive rescue of Theramenes, we should seek the source of Diodorus’ anecdote among the biographers of Isocrates. I believe that Hermippus of Smyrna, who flourished about 200 B.C., is easily the most plausible candidate. One of the most popular biographers of antiquity, Hermippus interested himself in the lives of lawgivers, the Seven Wise Men, philosophers, and orators, and is known to have devoted three books to Isocrates and his pupils. He is also known for having taken a special interest in how his subjects died, and for having few scruples about fabricating information when needed to satisfy his readers’ curiosity.⁷ In fragment 71 (Plut. Demosth. 5.7), for example, he quotes Ctesibius as saying that Demosthenes secretly obtained from Callias of Syracuse and others the technai of Isocrates and of Alcidamas. This bears a striking resemblance to Pseudo-Plutarch’s report of Isocrates’ having obtained the technai of Theramenes, those which go under the name of Boton.⁸

For various reasons, then, Hermippus seems to me the most likely inventor of this anecdote of the attempt to rescue Theramenes: his special interest in Isocrates, his fondness for death-scenes, and his widespread influence on the later tradition. His relatively early date also tells in favor of his candidacy.⁹ There was time for the anecdote to find its way into collections of edifying philosophical stories, with the name Isocrates corrupted to Socrates, before Diodorus Siculus set to work.

The Oxyrhynchus Historian portrayed Theramenes in an original fashion, as the champion of the “ancestral constitution.” This portrait — reflected in Diodorus 14.3.6 and in Aristotle, Ath. Pol. 34.3 — is untrustworthy, but its Tendenz is quite distinct from the hagiography of Diodorus 14.5.1-3.¹⁰

Footnotes

1     “The Authorship of the Hellenika Oxyrhynchia,” AHB 1[.5] (1987) 101-104. I agree with Harding that Cratippus is the author of the Hellenica Oxyrhynchia. Harding takes issue with H. Bloch’s arguments in HSCP Supp. 1 (1940) against Cratippus’ authorship; Professor Bloch has informed me (by letter) that he is now convinced that Cratippus is the author of the Hell. Oxy.

2     Phoenix 28 (1974) 120.

3     [Plut.] Vita Isoc. (Mor. 836F-837A); Anon. (Zosimus of Ascalon?), Vita Isoc. 254.23-30 Westermann.

4     Such a collection is presumably the source of the anecdote found in Plutarch (?), Consolatio ad Apollonium (Mor. 105B) and Aelian, V.H. 9.21 of Theramenes’ philosophical attitude when he is the sole survivor when a house collapses. Likewise, Cicero (Tusculanae Disputationes 1.96-97) probably knows of Theramenes’ fortitude in the face of death from such a collection rather than from the ultimate source, Xenophon’s Hellenica (2.3.56), which he appears not to have read (so K. Münscher, Xenophon in der griechisch-römischen Literatur [Philologus, Supplementband XIII.2 (Leipzig 1920)] 76). Among the possible intermediaries between Xenophon and Cicero are Bion of Borysthenes and Teles (cf. Münscher 47-48).

5     Cf. G. Oomen, De Zosimo Ascalonita atque Marcellino (Münster 1926) 7-10. The text is accessible in A. Westermann, Biographi Graeci Minores (Braunschweig 1845) 253-259, and in the introduction to the Budé edition of Isocrates.

6     Among representatives of the genre are Dionysius of Halicarnassus, de Isocrate 1; P. Cairo Masp. 67175; and the newly-published P. Oxy. 3543.

7     The fragments are collected by F. Wehrli, Die Schule des Aristoteles, Supplement I: Hermippos der Kallimacheer (Basel 1974). Fragments 64-78 come from the second and third books of Ρερι των Ισοκρατους μαθητων. On Hermippus, see F. Susemihl, Geschichte der griechischen Litteratur in der Alexandrinerzeit, I (Leipzig 1891) 492-495; Heibges, RE VIII, 845-852; W. Speyer, Die literarische Fälschung im heidnischen und christlichen Altertum (Munich 1971) 130.

8     The name “Boton” may be nothing more than a mischievous play on the name “Theramenes”: βοτον, grazing animal, being a natural counterpart to θηρ or θηριον or wild animal (cf. Plato, Menexenus 237D ζωα παντοδαρα, θηρια τε και βοτα.

9     The notice in Jerome for 404/3 B.C., Isocrates rhetor agnoscitur, may reflect this first public event in Isocrates’ career. The notice may go back ultimately to Apollodorus of Athens (mid-second century B.C.).

10     The Hellenica Oxyrhynchia was written no later than the 350s B.C., while Isocrates was still alive and when the memory of Socrates was too fresh for the sort of uncomplicated admiration shown by Diodorus. That Theramenes had no significant association with Socrates goes without saying: Theramenes is never mentioned by name in the authentic works of Plato, and Aeschines Socraticus’ use of Theramenes’ “wickedness” to defame Prodicus of Ceos (F 34 Dittmar = Athenaeus 5.220B) would be unintelligible if Theramenes were also linked to Socrates.