A Revised Portrait of Socrates
The Lycurgan program for the patriotic renewal of Athens was all-encompassing. Practical measures for protecting trade and rebuilding offensive and defensive military capability went hand in hand with an attempt at a moral renewal. Religious festivals and rituals were revived
and given added splendor; new temples were built, and old ones renovated. The political center of the city was given a new prominence through a deliberate campaign of beautification that turned the most symbolically charged structures into a stage setting for the city and its institutions. Thus the Theatre of Dionysus, the Pynx, and the gymnasium in the Lyceum were all rebuilt and expanded, as were other buildings and commemorative monuments such as the state burials of the fifth century. Just as in the time of Pericles, the city's physical appearance, its public processions, and publicly displayed statuary were all conceived as parts of an overall manifestation of traditional institutions.[28]
But whereas fifth-century Athens had been a society oriented toward the future, now the city was essentially backward-looking in its desire to preserve and protect. The reminders of the past were intended to strengthen solidarity in the present and increase awareness of the political and cultural values of the democratic constitution now under siege by the Macedonian king and his supporters in the city. The past was to be brought into the present, to make people conscious of their cultural and political heritage. It is no coincidence that in these same years a cult of Demokratia was installed in the Agora and a new monument of the Eponymous Heroes was erected in front of the Bouleuterion.[29] It was in this political and cultural climate that the statues of the great tragedians were put up. They too were intended to strengthen the sense of communal identity and to provide a model for the kind of good citizens that the city needed.
The statues of the three playwrights were not the only examples of retrospective honorific monuments in this period. It is possible that the new statue of Socrates was created as part of the Lycurgan program of renewal. Unlike the portrait with the silen's mask set up shortly after the philosopher's death, this was a statue commissioned by the popular Assembly and erected in a public building. It is reported that the commission to make the statue went to the most famous sculptor of the day, Lysippus of Sicyon (D. L. 2.43).[30]
Alongside numerous copies of the head, we are fortunate enough in this instance to have one rendering of the body, though only in a small-scale statuette (fig. 33). Socrates is now depicted no longer as the
Fig. 33
Socrates. Small-scale Roman copy of an original of the late
fourth century B.C. H: 27.5 cm. London, British Museum.
outsider, but rather once again as the model citizen. He wears his himation draped over the body comme il faut and holds firmly both the overfold in his right hand and the excess fabric draped over the shoulder in his left so that this artful arrangement will not come undone when he walks. These gestures, which seem so natural and insignificant, are in fact, to judge from the gravestones and votive reliefs, part of the extensive code of required behavior that carried moral connotations as well. Careful attention to the proper draping of the garment and a handsome pattern of folds are an outward manifestation of the "interior order" expected of the good citizen. In the pictorial vocabulary, such traits become symbols of moral worth, and, in the statue of Socrates, this connotation is particularly emphasized by the similar gesture of both hands.[31]
The philosopher who was once likened to a silen now stands in the Classical contrapposto pose, his body well proportioned, essentially no different from the Athenian citizens on grave stelai like that of Korallion (fig. 34). The body is devoid of any trace of the famed ugliness that his friends occasionally evoked, the fat paunch, the short legs, or the waddling gait. If we assume for the earlier portrait of Socrates, as I have previously suggested, a body type to match the Silenus-like physiognomy of the face, then the process of beautification, or rather of assimilation to the norm, represented by Lysippus' statue would have been most striking in a comparison of the earlier and later bodies.
The same is true for the head and face, although here the later type does take account of the earlier by adopting some of the supposedly ugly features of the silen (fig. 35). These had by now most likely become fixed elements of Socrates' physiognomy. If we suppose that Lysippus was consciously reshaping the older portrait of Socrates, then the procedure he followed in doing so becomes much clearer. The provocative quality of the silen's mask has disappeared, and the face is, as far as possible, assimilated to that of a mature citizen. Hair and beard are the decisive elements in this process of beautification. They set the face within a harmonious frame. The long locks now fall casually from the head and temples, and the few locks at the crown are made fluffy, so that the baldness looks rather like a high forehead. The face itself is
Fig. 34
Grave stele of Korallion. Athens, Kerameikos.
articulated with more traits of old age than was the case with the silen's mask. Some of the copyists even heightened this tendency of the original portrait, turning Socrates into a noble old man. Thus by the later fourth century, Socrates is no longer the antiestablishment, marginalized figure or the teacher of wisdom with the face of a silen, but simply a good Athenian citizen.[32]
The setting of this statue is no less remarkable than the makeover of Socrates' image. According to Diogenes Laertius (2.43), the statue stood in the Pompeion. This was a substantial building fitted into the
Fig. 35
Portrait of Socrates (Type B). Roman copy
after the same original as the statuette in fig.
33. Paris, Louvre.
space between the Sacred Gate and the Dipylon. Its purpose, as its name implies, was to serve as a gathering place for the great religious processions at the Panathenaea. Another of its functions seems to have involved the training of the Athenian ephebes. Pinakes with portraits of Isocrates and the comic poets, including Menander, suggest that the building played some role in the intellectual life of the city as well. It is even possible that the Pompeion was restored by Lycurgus at the same time as the nearby city wall.[33] In any event, Socrates was to be honored at one of the key centers of religious life and the education of the young. The man once condemned for denying the gods and corrupting the young had become the very symbol of Attic paideia, presented as the embodiment of citizen virtues, a model for the youth!