The Jurymen
Introduction: Seeing Plato through Aristophanes
The Jurymen is an Old Comedy style play fashioned after Aristophanes that discusses the philosophies of ancient thinkers, namely Plato and Aristotle. The goal of this project is to further an understanding of ancient philosophy, drama, and public life in the most effective and memorable way possible. The Jurymen is meant to serve first and foremost as a teaching tool for both students of Classics and the average interested person. When assessing how to most effectively attain this goal, and after taking to heart the philosophy of one of its main subjects, writing a play soon became the obvious answer. The two main reasons for this are dialogue and imitation.
Life for the ancient Athenians, like life for us, was not divided up into subjects, with each area of study neatly contained, but was more like a tapestry tightly woven together with all areas of life interacting in midst of a thriving culture. People were not conscious solely of art or philosophy or politics or drama or war but interacted with all.
In this same way, philosophy in ancient Athens was especially well connected; it actually got out of the house and saw a bit of the world. And when it saw something of interest, it commented on it. Ancient philosophy is an ongoing dialogue, not only amongst itself, but also amongst those many aspects of Athenian life: Aristotle’s view on drama is a response to Plato, whose view is arguably a response to Aristophanes, who wrote his own response to Socrates. The history of Athens is already an ongoing dialogue; all that the Jurymen aims to do is put the conversation back together again.
As for the way to best educate an audience on these points, The Jurymen steals its inception straight out of Aristotle. In the Poetics, Aristotle writes:
"...to learn gives the liveliest pleasure, not only to philosophers but to men in general; whose capacity, however, of learning is more limited. Thus the reason why men enjoy seeing a likeness is, that in contemplating it they find themselves learning or inferring." (Poetics, 1448b12-18)
Imitation--i.e. watching action in the setting of a play--is not just a mindless delight, but an important teaching tool. The application of this idea in Jurymen is very similar: both Classicists and the unspecialized viewer have an interest in learning about these events, however the average viewer has less knowledge about the subject than the Classicist and therefore is less quick to learn. However, by seeing an imitation of the facts, in this case embodied in a play, the average viewer can more easily understand the information.
The subject matter of the play also aims to achieve the goal of learning. The life and death of Socrates has become one of the most well-known stories of the ancient world. Socrates’ death is an iconic time in Athenian history, and his life seamlessly encompasses many realms of life of the ancient Athenian. A philosopher who was satirized in drama, fought in wars, loved a political leader, inspired in others critiques of piety and art, and met his end in the public court system--Socrates is a prime example of the multi-faceted life in Athens and is therefore an ideal subject for the play.
Scholars have argued for centuries over the true character of Socrates. As a modern reader it is impossible to know for sure several key details about Socrates and his life or character. For example, the philosophy of Socrates as presented in Plato could in fact be original to Plato, who uses Socrates only as a mouthpiece in his writings. This is the first hurdle in representing Socrates in a modern play. It is tempting to try and continue the search for the “true Socrates” through this creative medium, but such a feat would be impossible. Instead, The Jurymen aims to bring together the many ancient accounts of Socrates and present them in as comprehensive a way as possible.
The provided commentary connects the play with the texts, showing the ancient roots of the characters’ words and actions. The purpose of the commentary is to provide citations for the sources used to write the play as well as background explanatory information that will further the understanding of its references.
The commentary will also highlight intentional inaccuracies. As with modern movie adaptations of books, there will be times that the play takes liberties with history. For this reason, all deviations from historical norms and the reasons for them will appear in the commentary, so as to prevent confusion or a misrepresentation of the facts without explanation. The first inaccuracy is scene designation: ancient plays had no such divisions of scenes in their plays. They are added here for the sake of footnote numbering.