Sophocles, Plato, Marcus Aurelius, and Andraeus Capellanus

As a first pass, one might propose that the hypothesis seems to be true for all the authors except Sophocles. PlatoÆs dislike of Athenian democracy, which had executed his beloved teacher, Socrates, is well-known. His two longest works, the Republic and the Laws, which both deal with issues of government (among other things), are attempts to create a plan for a better system of government than existed in Periclean Athens.

One might have supposed that a Roman emperor would have had little to be unhappy about, and perhaps that was so for other emperors. However, Marcus Aurelius seems to have been a fairly unhappy man. His Meditations read much like the sort of daily inspirational reading that is now popular in ôrecoveryö programs and that people use to overcome their depression. In fact, some people now do use the Meditations in precisely that way.

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who need some spiritual sustenance. It is hard to tell whether it is Plato or Socrates who is more pessimistic. Is the Socrates whom Plato presents the ôrealö Socrates? Or is he instead a fictive character invented by Plato for dramatic and philosophical reasons? There are other contemporary descriptions of Socrates. The one by Aristophanes in The Clouds--to which Plato has Socrates refer in the Apology, at 19c--is admittedly a parody; and yet it must have borne some resemblance to the real Socrates, else it would not have been funny. Let it suffice to say that the ôSocratesö considered here is ôSocrates-as-described-by-Plato;ö and this paper will not attempt to decide whether that Socrates is ultimately different from Plato or not. One of the major symptoms of depression is, of course, suicide. Plato has Socrates discuss this in the Crito (and then again in the Phaedo). Did Socrates cooperate more willingly in his own death than he needed to? Perhaps Socrates was sufficiently sure about the nature of the afterlife that he knew it was something to be looked forward to, rather than feared. He is presented as arguing that it would be wrong, and an affront to the gods, to purposely take his own life, but this seems to be
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Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2713
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)