Эсхи́н Сфе́ттский: Сокра́та филосо́фының бірі

4th century BC Greek philosopher
philosopher

Aeschines of Sphettus (Αἰσχίνης Σφήττιος, c. 425 BC – c. 350 BC) or Aeschines Socraticus (Αἰσχίνης Σωκρατικός), son of Lysanias, of the deme Sphettus of Athens, was a philosopher who in his youth was a follower of Socrates. Historians call him Aeschines Socraticus—"the Socratic Aeschines"—to distinguish him from the more historically influential Athenian orator also named Aeschines. His name is sometimes but now rarely written as Aischines or Æschines.

According to Plato, Aeschines of Sphettus was present at the trial and execution of Socrates. We know that after Socrates' death, Aeschines went on to write philosophical dialogues, just as Plato did, in which Socrates was main speaker. Though Aeschines' dialogues have survived only as fragments and quotations by later writers, he was renowned in antiquity for his accurate portrayal of Socratic conversations. According to John Burnet, Aeschines' style of presenting Socratic dialogue was closer to Plato's than Xenophon's. (Some modern scholars believe that Xenophon's writings are inspired almost entirely by Plato's and/or by the influence of other Socratics such as Antisthenes and Hermogenes. On the other hand, there is no good reason to think that Aeschines' writings were not based almost entirely on his own personal recollections of Socrates.)

Diogenes Laërtius, in his brief Life of Aeschines, reports that Aeschines, having fallen into dire financial straits, went to the court of Dionysius the Younger in Syracuse and then returned to Athens after Dionysius was deposed by Dion. (If this is true, Aeschines must have lived at least until 356, which would mean that he probably died of old age in Athens, as he was likely not less than 18 at the time of Socrates' trial in 399.) He is also said to have practised rhetoric, writing speeches for litigants. Athenaeus quotes a passage from a lost prosecution speech, ghosted by Lysias, Against Aeschines, in which Aeschines' adversary chastises him for incurring a debt while working as a perfume vendor and not paying it back, a turn of events that is surprising—the speaker alleges—given that Aeschines was a student of Socrates and that both of them spoke so much of virtue and justice. Among other charges, Aeschines is basically characterized as a sophist in the speech. (We gather that the litigation in question was one brought by Aeschines himself against his lender for reasons that are not made clear in Athenaeus' quotation.) Diogenes Laërtius claims that, contrary to Plato's Crito, it was Aeschines rather than Crito who urged Socrates after his trial to flee Athens rather than face his sentence; Diogenes says that Plato puts the arguments into Crito's mouth because Plato disliked Aeschines due to his association with Aristippus. But Diogenes' source for this is Idomeneus of Lampsacus, a notorious scandalmonger. From Hegesander of Delphi (2nd century CE)—via Athenaeus—we hear of the scandal that Plato stole away Aeschines' only student Xenocrates. But Hegesander is notoriously unreliable, and the story is entirely uncorroborated. There is no other evidence of Aeschines' having a "philosophy" of his own to teach or any followers of his own.

The extant fragments and quotations concerning Aeschines were collected by the German scholar Heinrich Dittmar. That collection has been superseded by the Italian scholar Gabriele Giannantoni's work on Socratic writings. English translations are hard to find. G. C. Field has a translation of some of the Alcibiades fragments, paraphrases the other Alcibiades fragments, and a translation of Cicero's excerpt of Aspasia. More recently, David Johnson has published a translation of all the extant passages from the Alcibiades. Charles Kahn provides a good, up to date account of Aeschines' writings, with many references to current secondary literature on the topic. Kahn believes that Aeschines' writings, and in general all Socratic dialogues of the time, constitute literature and cannot be an ultimately reliable source of historical information. Kahn's treatment might profitably be contrasted with A. E. Taylor's position that both Plato and Aeschines preserve a faithful historical legacy in their portrayals of Socrates.