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Socrates Represented: Why Does He Look Like a Satyr?

1 The Swiss pastor Johann Caspar Lavater promoted the discipline of physiognomics in the 1770s as a scientific method to gain a better understanding of humankind. He considered the case of Socrates the physiognomic scandal: Why did this philosopher, the wisest and noblest of men, look like a satyr and thus subhuman? Today not many would consider physiognomics a scientific approach; still, what Lavater considered a scandal remains a puzzle, even though his question should be asked in slightly different terms. The physiognomy of Socrates—as both described in Plato’s and Xenophon’s works each titled Symposium and depicted in Socrates’s sculptured portraits—is an artifact, not a product of nature; therefore, the pertinent question is not why Socrates looked like a satyr but rather why he was made to look like one. From this perspective further questions arise: who made this choice (because it must have been a deliberate choice)? Under what circumstances and with what purpose? These questions are precisely what we will try to answer in this paper. Our primary evidence is certainly first rate: we have two very famous and highly influential texts written by two eminent personalities,