Jacques A. Bromberg, “Greek Tragedy and the Socratic Tradition”

Brill’s Companion to the Reception of Socrates, ed. Christopher Moore (Brill, 2019), ch. 1, pp. 41–74 · argument map in the form if a,b,c,d… then P

P — the synthesis

Greek tragedy is admissible evidence for the reception of Socrates — once we stop asking what did the historical Socrates think? and ask what did the name “Socrates” already mean, and by when? Because he left no writings, the man himself is the work that gets received. His tradition therefore behaves like Homer’s, so Nagy’s diachronic-evolutionary method transfers: an “idea of Socrates” was assembled and circulating by the 420s BCE, before Plato, who received rather than created it. Tragedy, though it names no contemporaries, engages that idea.

supported by six premises

aSocrates is a figure of pure reception

z →

Comic vs Platonic Socrates “explicitly contradict one another”
Joël 1921: “we know that we know nothing”
Porter 2006: not a person but “the transmission, projection, and construction of one”

textual · strong

bSo the synchronic goal is the wrong goal

y →

Diachrony lets conflicting texts be read as complementary, not true/false
Frees inquiry from “the rigidity that the search for a single, historical Socrates demands”

payoff · pragmatic

cThe Homer/Nagy model transfers

x →

Both first named by critics (Xenophanes, Heraclitus / the comedians)
Both “culture heroes”: source and creation of a tradition
F. A. Wolf raised both the Homeric Question and the Socratic Problem
Unitarian / Analyst ↔ Unitarian / Developmentalist
Conceded: Socrates is historical; anecdotes ≠ texts

analogy · method only

dAn “idea of Socrates” pre-dates Plato

u →

Poverty — probably false (hoplite service; Xanthippe’s dowry) yet universally circulated
Ameipsias’ Connus + Aristophanes’ Clouds, both 423 BCE; Eupolis frr. 386, 395
Plato does not contradict it — he presses it (Ap. 31a, 36e, 37c)
Shoelessness across Phdr., Mem., Symp.
Compressible to one verb: Σωκρατέω, Birds 1282

textual · load-bearing

eReception occurs in the receiver too

v →

Traditions are constructed, not inherited (Hardwick & Stray; Hobsbawm & Ranger)
Sites of reception: poet / actor / audience
Cicero mis-reads Orestes 1–3 (variety of suffering → endurance) — the misreading is the evidence

convention · contested

fTragedy does carry those topoi

w →

Rhetoric distrusted: Supp. 403–24 · Hipp. 486–7 · Hec. 254–7 · Bacch. 266–71
Akrasia: Med. 1078–9 · Hipp. 380–3 · Antiope fr. 220
Elenchus: ἔλεγχος ×6 in Hipp. · Bacch. 1259–79
Self-knowledge: Sophocles OT throughout
Medea 431 and Hipp. 428 pre-date Clouds

textual · underdetermined

textual citation — strongest analogy — transfers method, not conclusion payoff / disciplinary convention — dashed = question-begging outside the field

Obstacles cleared before P is even askable

O1 · No text to receive

Reception studies is a discipline of works; Socrates wrote none. Converted into the engine: the man becomes the work.

O2 · Wrong genre

Tragedy avoids naming contemporaries. Every reading must be inferential — downgraded from refutation to a limit on confidence.

O3 · Attribution

Socratic vs Sophistic vs generic “intellectual climate”; and Socrates vs Plato. Never fully answered.

The inference, and where it bears weight

z→a · y→b · x→c · u→d · v→e · w→f ⟹ z,y,x,u,v,w ∴ P

Load-bearing: premise d. Everything downstream needs a portable “idea of Socrates” by the 420s. Strip d and f collapses into coincidence — parallel intellectual climate, which is exactly what O3 warned about. Bromberg knows it: poverty and shoelessness get four pages, the tragedy is compressed.

The poverty move is the cleverest thing in the chapter. A trait that is probably untrue but universally circulated is better evidence than a true one — it can only be explained as a construction, which is what a and b predict.

Weakest joint: premise e. Licensing reception “in the minds of audiences” makes resonance count as data even without influence. Defensible inside reception studies, question-begging outside it. A reader who rejects e sees Section 2 as a list of commonplaces — which is precisely Barrett’s objection, quoted at p. 65 and never really answered.

The unclosed gap Bromberg names himself: on Medea / Protagoras — “whether Euripides is here responding to a Socratic thesis, or whether Plato has his ‘Socrates’ argue against a popular tragic theme.” If the second, the arrow runs backwards and f inverts.

Modality check: P is offered as a methodology, not a finding — “The goal of this chapter is to propose a methodology” (41); “this essay hopes only to move this project a small step forward” (71).