I was thinking about Sokrates tonight, truly one of the παῦροι βάκχοι (“Bacchic few.”) Throughout his dialogues Plato often makes allusion to Dionysian myth and festivals, particularly when he wants to score a dramatic point; he also has his hero demonstrate a more than casual familiarity with Orphism, for instance in Charmides 155B-157C where Sokrates prescribes a leaf-charm to cure headache, or Kratylos 400b where he quotes the famous σῶμα σῆμα (“body is a tomb/sign”) symbolon. One of the most profound and beautiful of these allusions often goes unnoticed. In the Phaido Plato has Sokrates characterize philosophers as those who ἐπιτηδεύουσιν… ἀποθνήσκειν τε καὶ τεθνάναι (“cultivate nothing but dying and death.”) The dialogue progresses with Oschophoria in the background, a harvest festival honoring Apollon and Dionysos which was instituted by Theseus upon his triumphant return to Athens after slaying Asterios the Minotaur. (You can learn more about it here.) Three rites of this festival are mirrored in the dialogue: a foot-race (61b), the telling of consoling stories (61d) and a victory-libation among friends, like the deadly φάρμακον Sokrates quaffs surrounded by his companions and students. The most interesting part comes after that: upon drinking the hemlock, Sokrates looks up and flashes his eyes “in a bull-like (ταυρηδόν) fashion.” This has, appropriately so, a double meaning. It not only identifies Sokrates with the Ταυροπόν (“Bull-faced”) and Ταυροκέρος Θεός  (“Bull-horned God”) Dionysos — but this was also one of the gestures by which the sacrificial animal consented to being slaughtered for the good of the πόλις-community. This makes Sokrates’ death into a voluntary act of self-offering to cleanse Athens of the evils and pollution which democracy had loosed upon it. That’s … pretty fucking deep, Plato. More and more I’m coming to realize the closer the reading the richer the rewards the text contains. Sometimes you just have to tear it apart to get to the juicy center.