Der verurteilte Philosoph, die Satyrn und das Hässliche: Das frühe Sokrates-Porträt im Kontext

Abstract

Some time after the execution of Socrates, but long before his rehabilitation, a group of friends decided to dedicate a statue of Socrates in the Academy: but in what form should he be depicted – he whom the polis, following the due process of law, had had executed as a criminal? Finally the people commissioning the statue made a rather startling decision: they had their honoured teacher depicted as a satyr. The satyresque physiognomy presented in condensed form the intellectual and ethical legacy of Socrates – a legacy which included his sentencing and death. The image proved to be unprecedentedly successful. All later attempts to render Socrates visually were essentially compelled to follow the same path. Lysippos, who was commissioned by the polis to create a new statue of Socrates after his rehabilitation, already seems to have seen no alternative to adhering to the satyr type. The success of this constructed physiognomy was so great that its artificial character came to be forgotten: what art had created was attributed to nature. Later generations no longer doubted that the living Socrates had indeed looked like a satyr. This is true of the visual arts and literature, but it is also true of ancient studies. To illustrate this we examine the article by Bernhard Schweitzer, who has interpreted the Socrates portrait as the earliest physiognomic portrait known to us and as an epochal turning point in the history of Greek portraiture.