ABSTRACT
To some men Socrates seemed to offer an example of a new life, and of a new orientation of philosophical reflection. All these, except Æschines, in the master’s lifetime or after his death, in schools which they already directed or in new schools, taught a rule of life and a doctrine which claimed to be based on the inspiration of Socrates. All, without exception, wrote free “Socratic works,” in which they put in their master’s mouth their personal interpretation of his thought. Tradition has established a curious order of rank among them, with Plato at their head, and all the others as “the lesser Socratics.” Is this just? A school owed its name to its site, the variety of subjects which it could teach, its material resources, and political circumstances as well as to the personal worth of its founder. Moreover, we have the whole of Plato’s works, while we know the others only by rare and small fragments, conjectural traces, partial contemporary evidence which can never be identified with certainty, or later evidence in which their ideas may have been modified by their successors. Between them and Plato there is no common measure offered to the judgement of the historian. We should note in particular that, if we are to obtain a rough notion of their tendencies, we must follow the refraction of those tendencies in their successors and therefore widen the historical limits of our study, down to the middle of the Illrd century and even beyond, until their schools are absorbed by more powerful schools. Nor can we, without engaging in a vicious circle, call these men “semi-Socratics,” for the question is, what the thought of Socrates really was, and we cannot presuppose that Plato alone represents it, pure and complete.
