Socrates and the Socratic Dialogue: An Overview from the First-Generation Socratics to Neoplatonism

Many attempts have been made to solve the Socratic question by identifying and then studying those sources assumed to yield the “historical” or at least a “reliable” or a “realistic” Socrates. Scholars have often restricted their inquiry, accordingly, to specific texts, or to some range of texts, by a “quadriga” of authors, namely Aristophanes, Plato, Xenophon, and Aristotle.6 Such a selection led to important scholarly work, but it often failed to account for the literary and philosophical complexity to which these texts refer, and upon which they largely depend. This collection aims to set out on a new path. It presents a comprehensive picture of Socrates and the Socratic dialogue in ancient Greek and Roman literature, from the comedies of Eupolis and Aristophanes, written during Socrates’ middle age, to the treatises of Proclus, more than eight hundred years later. Each chapter addresses an author or group of authors whose work reveals something significant either about the thinking associated with Socrates and his nearest associates, especially the authors of “Socratic dialogues,” or the power and texture of the Socratic icon as formed in these dialogues and passed down, reinterpreted, and redeployed in the thought, biography, oratory, and literature of the ensuing generations.