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Socrates and Aesop in Plato’s Phaedo

I begin with a famous scene from the end of the Apology. Starting off at Apology 40c, Socrates attempts to console the ‘friendly jurors’ that death is not to be feared on the grounds that it is good. It is good because at death, the soul either enters a state akin to eternal dreamless sleep or, if certain ta legomena are true, death results in Socrates’ soul migrating into a Hades, where his soul can interrogate the great and famous dead forever, without fear of any further fines or death penalties. Death appears to result in Socrates returning to an underworld agora for no divine revelations, but merely the rewards of more elenctic philosophizing. He will find there, at least, a more high-class set of interlocutors, including Orpheus, Museus, Hesiod and Homer, to name a few. This outcome, he affirms, would be an ‘inconceivable happiness’ (Apology 41c). Moreover, apart from applying his method to the claims of such gigantic figures, he also imagines having pleasurable conversations with others who are just as famous, thereby allowing him to compare his unjust verdict and fate with the various similar injustices these men have suffered; for example, Ajax and Palamedes (Ap 41a–b). So, then, let us take this last observation to establish the likelihood that in his last days in prison, Socrates was in a mood to compare his fate to those famous figures from the past who suffered in ways comparable to himself. What, then, does it allow us to say about the opening pages of