SOKRATES

Yale Center For British Art

Socrates: A Visionary Head

"This was on the 10th of December 1825... in answer to a question from me, he said, 'The Spirits told me.' This lead me to say: Socrates used pretty much the same language. He spoke of his Genius. Now, what affinity or resemblance do you suppose was there between the Genius which inspired Socrates and your Spirits? He smiled, and for once it seemed to me as if he had a feeling of vanity gratified. 'The same as in our countenances.' He paused and said, 'I was Socrates'—and then as if he had gone too far in that—'or a sort of brother. I must have had conversations with him. So I had with Jesus Christ. I have an obscure recollection of having been with both of them.'" 

Reminiscences of Henry Crab Robinson

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On Plate 93 of Jerusalem Blake pictured three accusers and labeled them 'Anytus Melitus & Lycon', the names of three men who were involved in the proceedings against Socrates which led to the guilty verdict and his subsequent death. Blake connects the condemnation of Socrates to that of Jesus by pointing out that the accusers of both men thought their victims 'Pernicious' men. Blake puts himself in the category with Socrates and Jesus by picturing in the image an imaginative representation not of men involved in his trial, but the three Hunt brothers, who destroyed his reputation as an artist and imputed insanity to him through their published criticism in the Examiner. The pointing hand, seen six times in the image, was associated with the Hunts, whom Blake personified as 'Hand' in Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, Plate 93, (E 253)
"Anytus Melitus & Lycon thought Socrates a
Very Pernicious Man   So Caiphas thought Jesus"

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Mary Renault, The Last of the Wine, Page 363.

"We have entreated many things of the gods, Alexias. Sometimes they gave, and sometimes they saw it otherwise. So today I petitioned as Sokrates once taught us: "'All knowing Zeus, give me what is best for me. Avert evil from me, though it be the thing prayed for; and give me the good which from ignorance I do not ask for.'"