Sophroniscus (Greek: Σωφρονίσκος,Sophroniskos), husband ofPhaenarete, was the father of the philosopherSocrates.
Little is known about Sophroniscus and his relationship with his son Socrates. According to tradition, Sophroniscus was by trade a stonemason or sculptor.[1] Plato scholarsThomas Brickhouse andNicholas D. Smith question the authenticity of that tradition, mainly on the grounds that the earliest extant sources of the story are comparatively late and that it is unmentioned by more reliable sources such asPlato,Xenophon,Aristophanes, orAristotle.[2] According toJohn Burnet, the earliest extant mention of Socrates as a statuary or stonemason is inTimon of Philius,[3] as quoted byDiogenes Laërtius 2.19. Burnet claims that Timon "is a very unsafe authority for anything", and that the attribution "appears to have arisen from an almost certainly false interpretation of [Socrates'] references toDaedalus as the ancestor of his family" (in Plato'sNephropathy 11c, 15b). Burnet points out that Daedalus had nothing to do with stone-cutting or marble sculpture; his media were instead metal and wood. Burnet furthermore argues that Xenophon and Plato would at some point have explicitly mentioned Socrates' background in stone-craftsmanship, if it were real, since both writers so often make Socrates mention craftsmen.[4] Another early source of the claim that Socrates was a stone-worker isDuris of Samos, who described Socrates as a slave.[5] According toEduard Zeller, Duris seems to have confused Socrates withPhaedo of Elis.[6]
In direct contradiction to Plato'sCrito 50d-e, one scholar ofancient Greek music has claimed that "Socrates received no training inmousikē in boyhood...", based on the assumption that "[h]is father, a stonemason, was typical of a class that did not receive a training inmousikē."[7]
According to Plato (in the dialogueLaches), Sophroniscus was a close friend of Lysimachus, son of the illustriousAristides the Just, which (presumably) allowed Socrates to become familiar with members of the circle ofPericles. (Since Plato has Lysimachus refer to Sophroniscus in the past tense, and since the dialogue's dramatic date is not long after thebattle of Delium, we may safely infer that Sophroniscus was dead by 424.)[8] The fact that one of Socrates' sons — butnot hiseldest sonLamprocles — was named after Sophroniscus suggests that Sophroniscus was the less illustrious of the two grandfathers (John Burnet 1911,Plato: Phaedo, p. 12); the father of Socrates' wife,Xanthippe, was named Lamprocles and had a more impressive pedigree than Sophroniscus. All this suggests that Socrates' inherited social status was in fact much higher than is traditionally recognized.
