(Original Review, 2000-12-02)
I'm not trying to do much more than suggest
Plato isn't starting from a blank sheet but from huge trauma: the death of a
way of life that produced his great teacher, Socrates, but at the same time,
killed him. The jurors who vote to put Socrates to death, after listening to
the speeches, are the citizens who voted to exterminate the Melians, and many
other atrocities.
Plato shows us a Socrates who stands against
the idea that persuasive speeches and a majority vote are sufficient to
establish the justice of a cause: although we still use trial by jury in 2500
years since. In the dialogues he is not just discussing abstract subjects with
abstract pupils, but debating with the players in the real, historical drama.
The question I'm asking, I suppose, is - where does Plato think the flaws are
in the world of Socrates, that eventually killed him? What's he trying to put
right? I don't pretend this is easy to answer satisfactorily: not least because
the characters in the dialogues who are so charming and admiring of Socrates
are often the same people who screw everything up for their teacher down the
line.
I think Hanson is pretty good on military
history but like many military historians, sees military solutions to political
conflicts everywhere he looks. He also seems to be growing increasingly
partisan.
I just wish I were living and teaching in
Thebes so that I often could take my coffee at the kafenion on Epaminondas
Square, in the shadow of his statue. Thebans notoriously picked the wrong side –
they usually elect a communist mayor when the rest of the country lurches to
the right, and thus the roads never get properly repaired. Epaminondas' tactic
of attacking the superpower by isolating its allies was very successful against
Sparta, not least because there were so few Spartans and their strength really
resided in keeping the allies under control. But I don't think Thebes really
chose not to have an empire: I think the league was the limit of its power
anyway.
Yes, they were crushed by Macedonia. Did
Epaminondas unwittingly teach Phillip how, when he was a young hostage in
Thebes? And did Epaminondas learn his tactics in turn from studying the Theban
general Pagondas, who did something similar at the battle of Delium? Where
Socrates stood in the front line...
