1. THE CONTEXT: APOLOGY 30c3–31c3

This section is a bird’s-eye juxtaposition of the spur reading against the gadfly one, beginning with the gadfly. At 30c3–5, Socrates pleads again for the jury not to make another rowdy fuss regarding what he is about to say (17d1, 20e4, 21a5). He says that killing him would cause greater harm to the jurors and his accusers than to himself, and that he is making a defence on behalf of the Athenians instead (30c7–8, d5–7). His argument is simple: they would be killing a gift from the god that is not so easy to replace (30e1–2).

Such is a conventional translation carrying across the force of the comparison of Apology 30e1–31a8. Socrates constantly, everywhere and anywhere irritates the populace with his biting philosophical discussions like an irritant gadfly landing wherever he happens to upon a large and noble but sleepy horse; or upon, as it were, the necks of individual sleepy men (the constituent parts of the horse) who could swat out and easily kill him. His deliberate poverty, which is not part of normal human behaviour, is partial proof of his divine mission in this respect (31a8–c3).

The protreptic allusions are also clear. Socrates is mentally ‘waking people up’ who are νωθϵῖς. LSJ s.v. II makes clear the protreptic function of Socrates’ irritation—‘νωθ-ής: of the understanding, dull, stupid.’ Socrates seeks to educate with his relentless cross-examinations by forcing people to recognize their ignorance. The same protreptic language from this passage is put to use in the pseudo-Platonic Clitophon (408b4–c4), when the titular character remarks on the powers of Socratic speech: προτρϵπτικωτάτους τϵ ἡγοῦμαι καὶ ὠϕϵλιμωτάτους, καὶ ἀτϵχνῶς ὥσπϵρ καθϵύδοντας ἐπϵγϵίρϵιν ἡμᾶς—‘And I consider (your logoi) most inspiring and helpful and, well, that they simply wake us up from our slumbering.’Footnote ⁵

On the other hand, the passage is rendered differently by Marshall (page 168):

On this interpretation, μύωπός τινος is translated as a ‘spur’ on the side of the Athenian horse, as μύωψ does also mean a spur for horses. The forms of irritation applied by Socrates to the Athenians—πρόσκϵιμαι (‘land upon, be placed upon’), ἐγϵίρω (‘awaken, stir, excite’), προστίθημι (‘be placed next to, impose upon’), προσκαθίζω (‘sit beside’)—can and often do apply to applications of a spur to a horse as much as to the behaviour and effects of a gadfly on large animals.

On both readings, Socrates acts under the direction of a god—only the god is in a different location, as it were, and functions differently. On the canonical reading, Socrates is sent by the god to sting or bite the Athenians individually that constitute the horse to awaken them from their dogmatic slumbers; on the other reading, Socrates is in some sense the attached spur to the foot of the divine steersman, Apollo. On both accounts, Socrates attempts to prompt citizens to pursue virtue; but (so Marshall, page 173), the spur reading alone delivers a direction to Socratic provocation and renders a ‘teaching purpose’ rather than mere excitement and irritation, providing a more constructive philosophical effect than the canonical reading.

Marshall also argues that only the first use of ἐγϵίρω refers to the actions upon the horse—that is, to speed up a slow horse. Socrates refers to himself as a spur only at the start of the passage, whereas the following two uses of the verb (ἐγϵίρων, ἐγϵιρόμϵνοι) refer to Socrates’ conversations outside any metaphorical context. Socrates drops the act, as it were, immediately after the articulation of the μύωπός τινος. By the second use of the verb, ‘Socrates has moved out of the horse analogy’ on the assumption (or mere assertion) that being sleepy and sluggish cannot be synonyms.Footnote ⁶ What this means for the function of οἷον δή—which Marshall translates as ‘in just this way’—is overlooked.

This split imagery is a significant divergence from the canonical reading of Apology 30c3–31c3, where Socrates is holistically a gadfly throughout the passage, as it was univocally read by ancient readers, as will now be demonstrated.

2. THE LINEAGE OF ‘GADFLY’: ANCIENT UNDERSTANDINGS

Marshall’s Section I (pages 163–6) is a historiographic survey of how ‘gadfly’ became the canonical translation. Since Ficino in 1557, the standard translation was ‘spur’—he had μύωπός τινος as calcaribus, ‘(hit with) a spur’—until Stallbaum, in his 1827 edition of the Apology, argued for the now-canonical notion. Marshall’s section VI (pages 171–2) charts ancient readings of the Apology’s μύωπός τινος as an alleged ‘spur’ as well. Here I examine the question of the passage’s ancient readings and deal with Stallbaum’s modern argument later.

According to Marshall (page 172), ‘a later Greek audience understood the word μύωψ in the context of Plato, pedagogy and horses to mean “spur” rather than “gadfly”’, and ‘the ancient scholia on the Apology do not touch on the discussion, which indicates that the alternative meaning’ of gadfly was not seriously ‘considered until … Stallbaum’s note in 1827’. This is based on the following from the Life of Xenocrates in Diogenes Laertius (4.6). As Marshall interprets the passage (page 171):

The conclusion: ‘Even if the quotation is not original to Plato’—nor, Marshall admits, an explicit reference to the Apology or Socrates—‘it indicates that a later Greek audience understood the word μύωψ in the context of Plato, pedagogy and horses to mean “spur” rather than “gadfly,”’ as it ‘includes some of the same vocabulary’ and makes ‘references to equestrian equipment, not insects’.

The extant literature on this passage in Diogenes, however, shows it has no connection with the Apology.Footnote ⁷ Rather, it reiterates a common Hellenistic trope about the nature of two different sorts of pupils: one slow but a true companion (Xenocrates), the other quick-witted and always prepared to run off (Aristotle). Diogenes uses it again verbatim at 5.39 with reference to Aristotle’s students in the same sense, Callisthenes and Theophrastus respectively. Cicero and Quintilian even report that Isocrates said the same of his students—again verbatim—about the slowness of Ephorus and the quickness of Theophrastus (when the latter was understood to be only a brief student of the orator).Footnote ⁸ It is variously reported, too, that Plato gave Aristotle the nickname ‘Horse’ (Ἵππος) for pulling away from him, or that he was called ‘Colt’ (Πῶλος) for being like a young horse that kicks its mother.Footnote ⁹ Diog. Laert. 4.6 is merely another anecdote about the hot-headed and irreverent Aristotle who ultimately left Plato in contrast to the slow-learning but loyal character of Xenocrates—the major theme of Diogenes’ Life of Xenocrates.

Diog. Laert. 4.6 thus has nothing to do with the Apology. But the ancient works that do refer to that work—and to the μύωψ passage in particular—all speak decidedly in favour of the gadfly interpretation. Take first the opening epistle of the Letters of Socrates, most probably written between the first century b.c.e. and the second century c.e. Footnote ¹⁰ Replying to the tyrant Archelaus, Socrates says that he is yet again refusing the invitation and money to join the ruler’s court because Archelaus fails to understand the philosopher’s mission, which is to stay in Athens for the benefit of his countrymen and the city at large. As Socrates says (Letters of Socrates 1.6.45–7.50):Footnote ¹¹

Here the author of the Letter, clearly referring to our passage, makes Socrates an annoying gadfly on the necks of sleeping and influential men. He is among those who are literally ‘being placed atop’ them (τῶν ἐπιστησόντων) in an effort to wake them up.

Consider next the Amores from a most astute reader of Plato and Classical literature, Lucian (or a capable imitator of his in the late Second Sophistic).Footnote ¹² At the beginning of the Amores, Theomnestus considers himself a master in the ways of love for boys and girls, playfully comparing himself to Socrates, enraptured by eroticism as if tortured by a god—indeed as a tragic figure. In this instance, Theomnestus makes a clear allusion to Socrates’ mission as a gadfly yet elegantly wedded to his eroticism (Amores 2):

The allusions here are many and open-ended, but one thing is clear: μύωψ in the context of this Socrates-analogue, Theomnestus, refers to an insect, one that compulsively, indeed mock-tragically pounces on beautiful people. Given, too, that the Amores deftly takes after the philosophical themes and literary backdrops of the Phaedrus, Symposium and Lysis, Xenophon’s Symposium and Plutarch’s Dialogue on Love (Moralia 7–9), there is good reason to think that we also have a reference to our passage in the Apology. Here, then, is further evidence of a living tradition in antiquity that saw μύωψ in relation to Socrates to mean a gadfly and not a spur.

Consider lastly the opening of Ioannes Mauropous’ Letter to Gregory—Ioannes was born c. c.e. 1000—in which the author describes the ideal philosopher, who in this case is compared to an annoying gadfly, buzzing around and pricking his friends (Letter to Gregory 17.1–7)Footnote ¹³ :

This passage shows that Socrates was read and understood by Ioannes to be a gadfly upon individuals; that the μύωψ of the Apology referred to an irritant insect. The notion of the ideal philosopher as one who never ceases to cause sleeplessness and consternation in the quest for truth is shot through this bit and the rest of the letter as well, making the connection to Socrates and the Apology even clearer.

The gadfly interpretation persisted from the first or second century c.e. well into the Byzantine period, and if there were an alternative available to these authors we might indeed expect to see it elsewhere—perhaps in the scholia, Stobaeus or the Suda. But we do not; and the evidence adduced above plausibly shows that the grammatical and philosophical interpretation of the passage had long been considered uncontroversial in favour of the gadfly interpretation. The passages also show that ‘Socrates as a gadfly’ was such an entrenched tradition that it could be fused with meaningful imagery and stories about philosophers and lovers. Ancient authors appropriated the image for many purposes in different contexts—and without need for a horse.

This survey of the appropriation of the Apology’s μύωψ in antiquity also refutes the collective argumentative force of Sections II and III of Marshall’s paper (pages 166–8). Section II (to which I return below) argues in part that meaningful parallels and citations in Greek tragedy to a μύωψ as a biting gadfly are always accompanied by the word οἶστρος, another term for biting insect. Section III argues that when μύωψ is not accompanied by οἶστρος, it always refers to a spur against a horse, usually in training, such as at Xenophon’s On Horsemanship 8.2–5 and Theophrastus’ Characters 21.8. Thus, it is argued, we should expect to see οἶστρος in the Apology, and because we do not, ‘spur’ is the only plausible translation.

But as we have just seen, the long tradition of Platonic interpretation of the Apology’s use of μύωψ by Greek-speaking authors and intellectuals took it to mean gadfly with or without a qualifying use of οἶστρος. And there are uses of μύωψ in Xenophon regarding horses and horse-training that refer to a gadfly without the qualifier οἶστρος, namely On Horsemanship 4.5 and On the Cavalry Commander 1.16. Modern scholarship has already long understood the two insect names to be synonyms: οἶστρος befits higher, usually tragic discourse, and μύωψ fits more colloquial speech, such as farmers (and presumably the rustic Socrates) would use.Footnote ¹⁴ Thus there is no external ancient evidence for reading μύωψ in the Apology as a spur.

3. THE MODERN ARGUMENT: THE QUESTION OF THE LAUGHABLE

A significant portion of Marshall’s argument is dedicated to refuting Stallbaum’s reasoning—in his 1827 edition of the Apology—for translating μύωπός τινος as ‘a sort of gadfly’. Stallbaum’s view is summarized by Marshall (page 165) with a brief refutation as follows:

These remarks receive some elaboration later (page 171):

The question is why Socrates would call his comparison γϵλοιότϵρον. The gadfly reading was found to be the best fit considering the variations of ‘landing upon’ and Socratic uses of irony and humour throughout the Platonic corpus.

Stallbaum’s argument is correct, for perfectly sound reasons. Tragedy alone is referred to above for literary parallels to interpret the gadfly image (the fate of Io alone in Aeschylus alone) in favour of the spur reading, whereas—in the context of determining which of two images is more laughable—the socio-cultural dynamics of comedy and the fables of Aesop are more relevant. The alternative on offer, Apollo riding the Athenian body with Socrates the spur on its side, is at best an imaginative projection about what the Athenians might have found funny. All empirical evidence, by contrast, demonstrates that ‘gadfly’ would be more humorous in the context of Socrates’ trial and for Athenians more generally. The fact that the gadfly image is laughable may just explain why it was chosen by Socrates to describe himself.

Take Aesop and the fable tradition first to see how this matter bears on Socrates’ choice of the comparison. That is, the ‘joke literature’ about animals carrying an often-violent message concerning the divine that was used in courtroom speeches as common topoi and which, according to Aristotle, were easily invented or adapted impromptu ‘especially if one has studied philosophy’ (Rh. 1394a7–8).Footnote ¹⁵ Indeed, most fables survived due to their utility for Roman orators and politicians—as they probably had done for their Greek counterparts—who preserved them as handbooks for memorization. An example of a courtroom use of a fable in Aristotle (Rh. 1393b5–6 = Fable 328): Stesichorus, Aristotle relates, was exasperated at having failed to win over the crowd with his demonstrative arguments. So, he at last resorted to inventing a fable. Stesichorus compared his audience, the people of Himera, to a horse who makes a deal with a man to protect the horse’s habitual grazing fields from an invasive stag. But when the terms of the deal were agreed upon, the man simply mounted and enslaved the horse with no thought to the stag. The moral of the story was to dissuade the people of Himera from electing a guardian.

Socrates versified the fables of Aesop after his conviction (Phaedo 60b) and Plato uses fables elsewhere in the corpus (Alc. I 123a = Fable 196, Tht. 174a = Fable 65). Insects such as stinging bees, fleas, annoying flies and ants, beasts of burden and other enormous animals—ferocious like a lion or lumbering like a donkey and an elephant—saturate Aesopic fables and often, in their oldest forms, in a mythic context involving Zeus’ divine oversight and direction. Whilst μύωψ does not turn up in a TLG search of the Aesopic canon, there are good reasons why some modern commentators on our passage of the Apology could remark that Socrates (or Plato, rather, as an adroit logographer) may have been influenced by the fable tradition in making the μύωψ comparison. Socrates’ comparing himself to a gadfly annoying the Athenian populace on behalf of Apollo would be at home with Aesopic traditions designed to raise something of a laugh in an instructive rhetorical context.Footnote ¹⁶

Consider next Old Comedy and how it may have factored into Plato’s choice of μύωψ for Socrates. One need only think of the Wasps, Birds and Frogs of Aristophanes to remember the foundational role that anthropomorphic imagery played in the genre, not least in the ideological fashioning of the citizens of Athens. In Archippus’ Fishes (400/399 b.c.e.), for example, the Athenians make a truce with the fish of the sea. Of the twenty fragments attributed to the play, at least seven (frr. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 27 K.–A.) make it clear that members of the Athenian public—politicians, soothsayers and all manner of unidentified individuals—were assimilated to distinct types of fish. Even the mythical king of Attica, Cecrops, was said in the Flatterers of Eupolis (421) to be a tuna from the waist down (fr. 159 K.–A.), a paraprosdokeion against his mythological form as half-man half-snake.

In the extant Clouds, Socrates was mockingly associated with irritating insects: fleas (144–53), gnats (154–68), bedbugs (634, 694–9) and cockchafers (761–3). In fr. 393 K.–A. of the first Clouds, two unknown Socratics (Socrates and Chaerephon?) were mocked as πηνίω, which the Suda says were ‘similar to a moth’ (ὅμοιον κώνοπι, fr. 393 K.–A.). The κώνωψ is probably a mosquito-like moth—particularly a mayfly.Footnote ¹⁷ Thus it has been reasonably suggested that the μύωψ of the Apology refers, in a self-effacing but ‘corrective’ and less vulgar (that is, less phallic) sense, to the first Clouds’ κώνωψ.Footnote ¹⁸ We should remember that Aristophanes’ Clouds—the first or the second—significantly foregrounds Socrates’ trial, and the comic poets were amongst his earliest and most fearsome accusers, so the imagery of a gadfly would have a particular salience.

Socrates was ridiculed in comedy even after his death for being as dangerous, beastly and ugly as the Cretan Minotaur (Com. Adesp. fr. 940 K.–A.). And Chaerephon was called a bat by Aristophanes (Birds 1553) probably because he was pale, indicating either a skin condition or because he stayed awake at night, a common trope held against philosophers especially in Plato’s day.Footnote ¹⁹

The image of Apollo riding the Athenian horse with Socrates as the spur on its side (or the side of Apollo’s foot?) has no ancient precedent. The idea that ‘similes are inherently somewhat ridiculous, and simply comparing Socrates to something other than himself is γϵλοιότϵρον’ with reference to Alcibiades comparing Socrates to Silenus in the Symposium (215a) does not address the fact that Alcibiades’ speech is called a satyr play (τὸ σατυρικόν σου δρᾶμα, 222d4), and satyrs were ithyphallic, human-goat hybrids. Hence the only adduced example of the laughable Socrates in Plato in support of the spur reading refers to Socrates as a kind of animal, not an inanimate object. Socrates’ comparing himself to an irritant insect in the Apology would be in keeping with familiar portrayals of himself and others on the comic stage—and therefore more plausibly laughable than a spur controlled by Apollo. Reading the passage as referring to an insect is the only available historical explanation for why Socrates would call the passage γϵλοιότϵρον.

Socrates’ referring to himself as a gadfly would also fit with Plato’s multifaceted deployment of comedy throughout the dialogues as a matter of genre and philosophical method. As is now understood, Plato inventively appropriated the conventions of fifth- and fourth-century comic theatre by embracing, enhancing and ultimately—as Rashed put it—‘improving’ upon those conventions, especially portraits of Socrates and philosophers.Footnote ²⁰ The Apology is no exception. The whole of Socrates’ defence is predicated on the comic poets being his ‘first and earliest accusers’ whom he fears the most (18b1–d2 and 19c1). Meletus may have appealed to the comic poets himself in his speech to bolster the official charge by ‘making a comedy’ of Socrates’ daimonion—ὃ δὴ καὶ ἐν τῇ γραϕῇ ἐπικωμῳδῶν Μέλητος ἐγράψατο (31d1). The reader of the dialogue should thereby be alive to resonances with comedy in Socrates’ defence. Note, then, the lightly abusive loidoria in Socrates’ riffs on Meletus’ name (Μέλητος) as showing a lack of ‘care’ (μϵλέτη) towards the city and the young (24b5, c1–4, d4), wedded to his histrionic outburst at 24e9. Moreover, Gomperz long ago saw a rebuttal to Socrates’ chattering persona in Ameipsias fr. 9 K.–A. at 23b1–c1 (although 31a8–d2 is a more plausible location).Footnote ²¹ Eupolis fr. 386 K.–A., wherein Socrates is accused of ‘having neglected’ food (κατημέληκϵν), seems rebutted at 36b5–d1 as well, when Socrates defends his famed ‘care of the self’ (ἐπιμέλϵια ἑαυτοῦ). Seeing various transformations and appropriations of the comic to rebut the comic in the Apology is thus a familiar approach.Footnote ²²

Socrates’ self-deprecation in calling himself a lowly insect is at least an indication that he is aware of how the public feels and thinks about him—using imagery redolent of his stage persona. Yet in calling such imagery to mind, Socrates justifies and explains what underlies those impressions. Tanner has compellingly argued that the insect analogy shows, as many instances of Socratic irony show, that ‘self-knowledge (or Socratic wisdom) necessarily include[s] the ability to recognize oneself as laughable’.Footnote ²³ Or as Halliwell puts it, we are once again confronted ‘with an irreducibly “serio-comic” Socrates: a man who takes the pursuit of philosophy with indefatigable seriousness, yet who never seems very far from humorous self-deprecation … a person who can emphatically put crude laughter in its place … and yet who is capable, as the Phaedo demonstrates, of laughing quietly with his friends not only in the face of, but actually about, death’.Footnote ²⁴

Stallbaum had good reasons—empirical and philosophical—to detect in Socrates’ use of the μύωπός τινος a convention ‘in keeping with Socratic humour’ and Socrates’ self-deprecatory irony. The gadfly interpretation fits precisely because calling oneself a gadfly was and remains indelibly humorous. Renaissance and later rejections of the gadfly reading may have occurred simply because it offended their sensibilities—those commentators who were, after all, the most liberal in athetizing whatever dialogues they felt did not accord with their view of the dignity of Plato’s thought and writing. But ‘all the same,’ Socrates says, ‘while I will seem to joke around with some of you, rest assured: everything I say to you will be the truth’ (20d4–6). The irritant gadfly image was an appropriate one during Socrates’ time as it remains today.

4. OTHER SOCRATIC ANIMALS

Let us note the other animal comparisons for Socrates as a philosopher throughout the Platonic corpus and in the works of the ‘other’ Socratics.

At Meno 79e6–80b7, the titular character takes time to jokingly (ϵἰ δϵῖ τι καὶ σκῶψαι) compare Socrates to a stingray or torpedo fish (πλατϵίᾳ νάρκῃ τῇ θαλαττίᾳ) who leaves his interlocutors, in this case Meno himself, stung and numbed in the attempt to find the nature of aretê. In that humorous ‘satyr play’ of the Symposium, too, Alcibiades compares Socrates not only to a divine Silenus (again, a human-goat hybrid), but the discussions with him to the effects of having been bitten by a viper or some other animal (παθόντα οὐκ ἐθέλϵιν λέγϵιν οἷον ἦν πλὴν τοῖς δϵδηγμένοις, 217e6). Socrates is to Alcibiades some sort of animal who causes a great deal of distress in the souls of his interlocutors—forcing them to recognize their ignorance in a divine capacity.

Looking outside of Plato, Socrates is compared to a crab, a donkey and a Silenus by Xenophon at Symp. 5.5–7. Animal comparisons, moreover, were apparently fundamental to Antisthenes’ philosophical method (ἐκμαθϵῖν ἐξ ϵἰκόνος).Footnote ²⁵ Antisthenes compared the people of Athens to snails and locusts, Plato to a proud horse, possibly even himself to a ‘biting’ dog (given his well-known profanity and sharpness of tongue, perhaps the origin of Diogenes ‘the Dog’), and surreptitious flatterers to crows.Footnote ²⁶ Antisthenes even devised a fable in discussing the nature of democracy, where a lion is prepared to pounce on an over-proud hare; and at the conclusion of his Speech of Odysseus, the titular speaker compares Ajax ‘in his nature’ to ‘slow and mentally dull asses and oxen (or cattle) that graze in the pasture (τὴν ϕύσιν ἀπϵικάζων τοῖς τϵ νωθέσιν ὄνοις καὶ βουσὶ τοῖς ϕορβάσιν) who give over to others the power of bonding and harnessing themselves’.Footnote ²⁷

What we find here are all organic comparisons. Socrates is never once in extant Socratic literature—not in any meaningful way—explicitly compared to a lifeless object. The real Socrates was probably fond of animal comparisons, the likes of which his followers took seriously in their own writings. He may even have called himself a gadfly at his real trial.

5. CONCLUSION: GADFLIES AND SOCRATIC APORIA

It is a testament to the modern relevance of classical philology that a mistranslation of two words in the Apology—μύωπός τινος—could have shaped the last two hundred years of the Western intellectual tradition and the modern notion of the philosopher for the worse. But the fact is that there has been no mistranslation, no distortion.

Socrates, or at least the so-called ‘early’ Socrates, is an aporetic philosopher. His mission as stated throughout the Apology is to make people recognize that they do not know what they think they know and that they should care for themselves above all. These are the very things he says immediately before and after his assimilation to a μύωψ in some of the most iconic words of the Platonic Socrates (30a7–b4, 31a8–b5). His job, as Clitophon put it, is to ‘wake us up’ from our dogmatic slumbers with a heightened and new awareness of our ignorance and the need to pursue virtue.

At the same time, Socrates’ discussions leave us—because of our own autonomous choices and likely his, too—in an aporia, literally ‘resourceless’ and ‘pathless’ as to the content of that virtue. If this received opinion is correct, Socrates’ mission in the Apology and elsewhere does not require, nor in any obvious sense fit with, the effects of an Apollonian steersman with Socrates the spur on its side. But his aporetic mission does fit with the effects of a rousing gadfly, irritating and listless as that mission and its results may be.

It is a legitimate and pressing question as to how benevolent or helpful—or how bullish and confrontational—Socratic inquiry is meant to be, as Marshall points out at Section VIII (page 173). Indeed, as Clitophon also put it in his closing peroration: ‘To the mortals who have yet to be turned to philosophy, Socrates, I say you are worth everything; but to those who have already been so turned, you are just about a roadblock to the goal of virtue, which is to become eudaimôn’ (410e5–8). How, in other words, can aporetic philosophy help us accomplish the goals it lays before us? And how productive, in a broader sense, are his provocations and protreptic stings as a kind of philosophical way of life?

These questions cannot be answered here.Footnote ²⁸ But the fact remains that Socrates, at Apology 30c3–31c3, compares himself to an irritant gadfly or some other insect who seeks to provoke in individuals, like Meno above, a distressing mental aporia—so long as it brings about a desire for virtue. He is also sent by Apollo to do so. Thus, when Socrates calls himself ‘a sort of gadfly’ on the necks of citizens, the Lexicon should take note. The questions nonetheless remain the same: what sort of philosophical gadfly is Socrates? And how, if at all, should we take after him in his manner of living?