100 NEWBOLD— THE SYRIAC DIALOGUE " SOCRATES." 



In extent it is not very long, occupying only nine pages octavo. 

 In form it professes to be a dialogue between Socrates and an 

 anxious inquirer named Herostrophus or Erostrophus.^ But it 

 contains little in the way of dialogue, the greater part of the book 

 being occupied by a discourse in which Socrates answers Hero- 

 strophus's questions. 



The author's conception of Socrates bears no resemblance to the 

 Socrates of Plato and but little to the Socrates of Xenophon. He 

 is indeed an oriental sage whose utterances are received as oracles 

 by his admiring hearers, and, although he expresses his views with 

 modesty — the only trace of the " irony " of the historical Socrates — 

 he nevertheless feels that their homage is justified. " O young 

 man," he says to Herostrophus in one passage, " not in vain and 

 not for nought have you come to me to hear my words." 



The ostensible theme is the nature of the soul, but in the course 

 of the discussion Socrates reveals the outlines of a system of phi- 

 losophy which is of no little interest to the student, not because of 

 its intrinsic value, but because of the light which it throws into some 

 dark corners of the history of thought. The elements of this system 

 are those same Platonic, Aristotehan and Stoic ideas which long 

 before the beginning of our era had become the common property of 

 the races that shared the Hellenistic culture. The syncretistic sys- 

 tems into which they were wrought by sundry thinkers are known 

 by many names — Alexandrian, Hermetic, Gnostic, Neo-Pythagorean 

 and Neo-Platonist — but all possess many features in common. 

 Some of these the system of the " Socrates " also presents, but its 

 peculiar interest lies in the fact that the familiar elements are com- 

 bined in novel fashion. I have indeed been able to discover but one 

 other system which is closely akin to it, that of the Syrian phi- 

 losopher Bardaisan, who was born in Edessa A.D. 154 and died in 

 222. It has long been known that Bardaisan exerted no little influ- 



oriental, the borrowed ideas are treated as no Greek would treat them and 

 the conspicuous absence of the technical terms of philosophy common in 

 Syriac from the fourth century onward suggests an early date of composi- 

 tion. Whatever the original language, I think it probable that the author was 

 a Syrian ; certainly not a Greek. 



^ Ryssel suggests that the name should be read " Aristippus,'' for which I 

 see no good reason. 



