3.1 The Childhood of Socrates
Socrates’ childhood was probably fairly typical for a boy from a family of modest means. He was born to Sophroniscus and Phaenarete in the deme, or borough, of Alopece in the year Apsephion was archon of record, or the fourth year of the seventy-seventh Olympiad (470/469 BC). We do not know exactly what day or month he was born. Soon after his birth, his father would perform the rite of amphidromia, running around the hearth carrying the baby to welcome him into the family. Subsequently, a family gathering, the dekatē (Tenth Day) ceremony, was held, during which Sophroniscus acknowledged the paternity of his boy, offering a sacrifice and giving him the name Socrates.
Every Athenian belonged to a phratry or clan, a kinship group associated with a common ancestor. During a three-day feast called the Apaturia, held in the autumn month of Pyanepsion, the phratries met and performed rites of passage for important events. On the first evening of the festival a group dinner was held that served as an annual family reunion. On the second day sacrifices were made to the patron deities Zeus and Athena. On the third day new clan members were introduced, and a sacrifice was offered for each newborn. When he was three or four years old, Socrates was presented to his clan and partook of the sacrificial meal as a new member. The clans sometimes kept records of their members which helped to establish their ages and legitimacy for citizenship. Though the clans had no official constitutional standing, they were important to family and community life, part of the social glue that held Athens together.
Socrates would have grown up in a typical Greek house of the time, consisting of mud-brick walls constructed on lower courses of uncut stones. Houses were small, both in the country and in the crowded city, even houses of the wealthy. They consisted of flimsy external walls with only a door or two opening outside, while the rooms opened inward onto a central courtyard. A larger home would have a second story with a veranda over the courtyard. Roofs were covered with a wooden framework on which terra cotta tiles were laid. Most houses in the fifth century had only an earthen floor. The interior walls were plastered and whitewashed, and the walls of an upperclass home might be painted with murals.
A Greek house was divided between the men’s rooms and the women’s rooms, reflecting the cultural divide that kept women sequestered at home. As a young child Socrates’ place would be in the women’s quarters. When he was older Socrates would live in the men’s quarters, which included a small dining room surrounded by couches for dinners and symposia or drinking parties for serious entertaining.
Socrates’ father, Sophroniscus, was a hoplite, a man bearing arms (hopla): an infantryman, and hence prosperous enough to own armor and count as a member of the middle class. (Socrates would later inherit the shield, spear, and body armor from his father and succeed to his military position.) As a boy Socrates went to school, as did many but not all Athenian boys. The very rich had personal tutors. The poor started working as children, while the reasonably well off attended small schools funded by their parents’ fees. Socrates would be escorted to school at dawn by his paidagōgos, a trusted male slave who acted as Socrates’ babysitter, chaperone, and adviser.
