Between escape and death: Socrates, interpreter of dreams
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.61378/v4vr3d50Keywords:
Socrates, Crito, dream, Achilles, Athenian democracyAbstract
This article proposes to examine the dream narrated by Socrates to Crito in the eponymous dialogue, when Crito visits him in the Athenian prison on the eve of his death, with the intention of persuading him to flee. In the dream account, Socrates claims to see a beautiful woman approaching, dressed in white, who calls to him and quotes a verse spoken by Achilles in the Iliad. Considering that Plato's hero was attentive to divine signs and used to interpret his own dreams, this article seeks to follow him in the analysis of the dream message, whose interpretation proves ambiguous and also requires the contextualization of the Homeric verse. The hypothesis investigated is that Socrates' dream, in analogy to the dual destiny of Achilles, constitutes simultaneously a prophetic revelation and the expression of a dilemma between escape and acceptance of death. In parallel, one can observe the influence, on Plato, of the forms of description and conception of dreams present in the literary tradition that precedes him, as well as the philosophical reworking that the author gives to them.
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